Ana Maria Fernandez

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Verified

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• Ph. D. in Psychology, University of Chile
• Professor (Full) at University of Santiago Chile

Identifying cues to contagious disease is critical for effectively tracking and defending against interpersonal infection threats. People hold lay beliefs about the types of sensory information most relevant for identifying whether others are sick with transmissible illnesses. Are these beliefs universal, or do they vary along cultural and ecologic...

From an evolutionary perspective, love and attachment foster closeness, while jealousy ensures exclusivity in romantic relationships. This study examined the links between jealousy and affective aspects of love, hypothesizing positive associations despite their apparent opposition. An online sample of 265 individuals in Chile and Spain completed me...

Evidence is abundant that evolution by selection has produced sex differences in the design of adaptations to solve the problems surrounding reproduction. A prime example is the design of human jealousy, which research suggests is triggered by distinct evoking acts that are specific challenges for women and men in their exclusive reproductive bond....

Cultural logic is a set of cultural scripts and patterns organized around a central theme. The cultural logics of dignity, honor, and face describe different ways of evaluating a person’s worth and maintaining cooperation. These cultural logics vary in prevalence across cultures. In this study, we collaboratively develop and validate a measure capt...

Cultural logic is a set of cultural scripts and patterns organized around a central theme. The cultural logics of dignity, honor, and face describe different ways of evaluating a person’s worth and maintaining cooperation. These cultural logics vary in prevalence across cultures. In this study, we collaboratively develop and validate a measure capt...

Vagal tone is a psychophysiological construct indexed by heart rate variability (HRV) that is associated with emotion regulation, interpersonal abilities, and mental health in non-clinical and clinical populations. However, the evidence concerning its role in psychotherapy is still limited and no review summarizing the obtained results has been rep...

Romantic love and jealousy seem antagonistic, but the expression of both emotions have evolutionary functions that can go in the same direction of maintaining a relationship. Considering natural selection designed adaptations to solve the problems surrounding reproduction, then love and romantic jealousy are emotions aimed at staying cooperative fo...

In a multinational project (N = 3707), we factor analyzed a commonly used self-report measure of intrasexual competition and found a three-dimensional system. We called these factors envy (i.e., wanting what others have), jealousy (i.e., protecting what one has), and competitiveness (i.e., beliefs that one is better). To better understand these fac...

Mate value is an important concept in mate choice research although its operationalization and understanding are limited. Here, we reviewed and evaluated previously established conceptual and methodological approaches measuring mate value and presented original research using individual differences in how people view themselves as a face-valid prox...

People vary both in their embrace of their society’s traditions, and in their perception of hazards as salient and necessitating a response. Over evolutionary time, traditions have offered avenues for addressing hazards, plausibly resulting in linkages between orientations toward tradition and orientations toward danger. Emerging research documents...

A review of the book “Evolution’s empress: Darwinian perspectives on the nature of women” by Maryanne L. Fisher, Justin R. Garcia, and Rosemarie Sokol Chang (2013).

The study investigated seasonal variations in mating behavior by analyzing the search for sex during the COVID-19 quarantine in Google trends. Causal impact analyses were used to examine the trends of Google keyword searches during the period in which the quarantine and post-quarantine period lasted in Chile, for topics related to mate preferences....

Jealousy is an emotional response to the threat of losing a valued relationship. In this research, we revisit the proposal that jealousy in friendship is an evolved response to the threat of someone else replacing what is unique in this kind of relationship. Burkett (2009) found that most people identify mental coordination—responding to the world...

The COVID-19 pandemic caused drastic social changes for many people, including separation from friends and coworkers, enforced close contact with family, and reductions in mobility. Here we assess the extent to which people's evolutionarily-relevant basic motivations and goals—fundamental social motives such as Affiliation and Kin Care—might have b...

Differences in attitudes on social issues such as abortion, immigration and sex are hugely divisive, and understanding their origins is among the most important tasks facing human behavioural sciences. Despite the clear psychological importance of parenthood and the motivation to provide care for children, researchers have only recently begun inves...

How does psychology vary across human societies? The fundamental social motives framework adopts an evolutionary approach to capture the broad range of human social goals within a taxonomy of ancestrally recurring threats and opportunities. These motives—self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate acquisition, mate retention, and...

Jealousy is an affective state activated by a perceived threat to a valued relationship by a third party. On average, males report higher distress about their partner’s sexual extra-pair involvement, while females show higher emotional jealousy. These sex differences are specific to heterosexuals and to contexts with potential reproductive costs. W...

Aim: Determining the role of attachment and cardiac vagal regulation on early clients’ clinical status and working alliance in psychotherapy. Methods: 55 clients completed the Experiences in Close Relationships scale (ECR) to assess attachment orientation and several clinical measures (the Symptom Checklist -90- Revised, the Outcome Questionnaire-4...

The interface of sexual behavior and evolutionary psychology is a rapidly growing domain, rich in psychological theories and data as well as controversies and applications. With nearly eighty chapters by leading researchers from around the world, and combining theoretical and empirical perspectives, The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectiv...

Differences in attitudes on social issues such as abortion, immigration, and sex are hugely divisive, and understanding their origins is among the most important tasks facing human behavioural sciences. Despite the clear psychological importance of parenthood and the motivation to provide care for children, researchers have only recently begun inve...

People vary in the extent to which they embrace their society’s traditions, impacting a range of social and political phenomena. People also vary in the degree to which they perceive disparate dangers as salient and necessitating a response. Over evolutionary time, traditions likely regularly offered direct and indirect avenues for addressing hazar...

Feeling and expressing love is at the core of romantic relationships, but individuals differ in their proclivity to worry about their relationships and/or avoid intimacy. Saying “I love you” signals a commitment to a future with our romantic partner. Contrary to gender stereotypes, research in the United States demonstrates that men are more likely...

The present work presents the polivagal theory as a bio-behavioral model of emotional and interpersonal behavior, aiming to identify its theoretical contributions to the study of psychotherapy regarding client's clinical status, therapeutic process as well as change. A review of the model shows a reconceptualization of interactions among autononomi...

Jealousy protests have been linked to the intrusion of social rivals challenging infants' exclusive access to maternal care and resources that typically accompany attachment. Previous studies revealed that the experimental presentation of social rivals evokes protest in as early as 6 months old infants. This study replicated research on jealousy pr...

Previous work has reported a relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and prejudice toward various social groups, including gay men and lesbian women. It is currently unknown whether this association is present across cultures, or specific to North America. Analyses of survey data from adult heterosexuals ( N = 11,200) from 31 countries show...

El presente trabajo tiene como principal objetivo presentar la teoría polivagal como un modelo bio-comportamental del comportamiento emocional e interpersonal, con la finalidad de identificar ámbitos de contribución de la teoría al estudio de la psicoterapia en torno al estatus clínico de los consultantes, el proceso terapéutico y el cambio. La rev...

Alexithymia is a trait composed of difficulties identifying feelings (DIF), difficulties describing feelings (DDF), and externally orientated thinking (EOT). It is an important transdiagnostic risk factor for psychosomatic disorders and other types of emotion-based psychopathologies, and can reduce the efficacy of some treatment approaches. Alexith...

THIS PRE-PRINT IS CURRENTLY UNDER REVIEW AT AN ACADEMIC JOURNAL. Alexithymia is a trait composed of difficulties identifying feelings (DIF), difficulties describing feelings (DDF), and externally orientated thinking (EOT). It is an important transdiagnostic risk factor for psychosomatic disorders and other types of emotion-based psychopathologies,...

This is a Spanish version of the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ). It was translated from the original English version by Rodrigo Becerra, David Preece, Carmen Gloria Baeza, and Ana Maria Fernandez. This Spanish translation has been validated and published in Frontiers in Psychiatry (Psychosomatic Medicine Section).

We evaluated the psychometric properties of the empathy quotient (EQ) scale translated to Spanish in Chile. We estimated its structural validity, and its construct validity with other convergent measures of empathy and attachment, as well an inversely associated construct such as aggression. We used a general sample of students and community indivi...

Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear w...

In a sample of 68 adult men and 70 adult women from Santiago, Chile, with a mean age of 29.40 years and a median age of 29, the effects of one's own infidelity and that of one's partner on different types of jealousy were examined. Of the respondents 47.1% had ever been unfaithful, and over half (56.5%) reported that their partner had been unfaithf...

Jealousy promotes relationship maintenance by reducing partners’ extra-pair liaisons. On average, men report higher distress about their partner’s sexual infidelity, while women show higher emotional jealousy. These sex differences are specific to heterosexuals, and to contexts with potential reproductive costs. Here we tested the effect of sex and...

Intimate partner violence is considered a public health problem. The Social Sciences have attempted to explain this behavior mainly from the Theory of Gender and Theory of Family Violence. The present study analyzes, in 112 couples, the relationship between general and specific aggression, and the distribution of specific aggression within the coup...

Over the last ten years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence-dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgments of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear w...

The present research examined the association between intrasexual competitiveness (as an adaptive feature of human mating) and adult attachment dimensions (which develop throughout ontogeny and are relatively stable patterns of relationship approaching in adulthood), postulating that the dimensions of attachment will be predictive of intrasexual co...

Individuals vary in their intrasexual competitiveness attitude, i.e., an important variable reflecting the potential threat or the extent to which one perceives other individuals of the same sex as social or mating rivals. In this study, we investigated the relationship between self-perceived mate value, a construct usually linked to intersexual se...

Romantic mouth-to-mouth kissing is culturally widespread, although not a human universal, and may play a functional role in assessing partner health and maintaining long-term pair bonds. Use and appreciation of kissing may therefore vary according to whether the environment places a premium on good health and partner investment. Here, we test for c...

Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which...

A study among 66 couples from Santiago, Chile examined the association between objectively assessed height and self-reports of mate value and attractiveness. In addition, assortative mating for these variables was assessed. There was some evidence for assortative mating: Although there was no correlation between the height of both partners, there w...

Concerns have been growing about the veracity of psychological findings. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and non-representative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Large-scale collaboration, in which one or more research projects a...

Intrasexual competition can be defined as the struggle between members of one sex to increase their access to members of the other sex as sexual partners. In our species, height is a sexually dimorphic trait probably involved in both intrasexual and intersexual selective processes. In the present research, we examined the relationship between heigh...

Durante los últimos años en Chile se ha detectado una masificación en el uso de anticonceptivos orales. Sin embargo, en Chile y al igual que en casi todos los países latinoamericanos prácticamente no se han investigado sus implicancias sobre la conducta humana. Específicamente, este estudio evaluó el impacto del uso de estos anticonceptivos sobre l...

Previous studies have documented links between sub-clinical narcissism and the active pursuit of short-term mating strategies (e.g., unrestricted sociosexuality, marital infidelity, mate poaching). Nearly all of these investigations have relied solely on samples from Western cultures. In the current study, responses from a cross-cultural survey of...

Oral contraceptives, also known as birth control pills (PAs from now on), have been available on the world market for five decades. At present, the use of PA is massifier worldwide, being consum ed by more than 100 million women on the planet. In recent years, in Latin America has been detected a dramatic increase in the use of oral contra ceptives...

People who are more avoidant of pathogens are more politically conservative, as are nations with greater parasite stress. In the current research, we test two prominent hypotheses that have been proposed as explanations for these relationships. The first, which is an intragroup account, holds that these relationships between pathogens and politics...

Palabras Clave: The current research assesses the psychometric properties of the mate value components questionnaire (MVC), and the different dimensions underlying this construct. A sample of 688 Chilean adults participated in the study. The reliability of the scale was estimated and other related measures of mate value were applied to estimate the...

This chapter highlights and discusses the role of women’s competitive ornamentation as one of the relevant, and so far overlooked, ancestral selective pressures in the evolution of artistic propensities. The authors critically discuss how and why sex differences and sexual selection processes acting on women have been disregarded for more than a de...

Several studies have demonstrated the relationship between handgrip strength (HGS) and fighting ability in men, which is a relevant trait for intrasexual competition to increase the probability of obtaining a mate. However, few studies have determined a relationship between fighting ability and men’s self-perceived capacity to find, attract and ret...

A Escala Revisada de Apego Adulto é uma medida de apego relacional com três dimensões: proximidade, dependência e ansiedade. No Estudo 1, traduzimos a escala e a aplicamos em uma amostra de 420 universitários, visando avaliar sua confiabilidade. Estimamos ainda o critério de validade da escala mediante comparação com medidas de auto-percepção e afe...

Romantic jealousy is a sexually-differentiated emotion designed to secure reproductive liaisons. However, some suggest that sexual differences observed in the kind of infidelity that triggers jealousy cross-culturally could be only an artifact of attachment, shaping the masculine mind to develop a dismissing/avoidant attachment style, while the fem...

Palabras Clave: The current research assesses the psychometric properties of the mate value components questionnaire (MVC), and the different dimensions underlying this construct. A sample of 688 Chilean adults participated in the study. The reliability of the scale was estimated and other related measures of mate value were applied to estimate the...

El presente estudio muestra la adaptación al contexto local del Inventario de Comportamientos de la Pareja que Provocan Celos (ICPC) creado en Holanda por Dijkstra, Barelds y Groothof (2010). Un pilotaje del inventario arrojó alta consistencia interna y estabilidad test-retest. Se administró el cuestionario a un grupo de 366 personas y 31 participa...

Durante el año 2014 se resolvieron los concursos FONDECYT regular 2014 y de Iniciación a la investigación 2013. En el concurso de Iniciación a la Investigación, se presentaron 703 proyectos, de los cuales fueron aprobaron 308. De estos, 6 corresponden a Psicología (de un total de 20 proyectos postulados), por un valor de 358.897 millones de pesos,...

Attractiveness is the most important component of women intrasexual competition and it certainly has an impact in female’s perceived mate value (i.e., the value of an individual to the opposite sex as a potential mate). In the realm of intrasexual competition women are eager to emphasize their attractiveness and compete with rivals displaying these...

Facial Fluctuating Asymmetry (FFA) is proposed as an indicator of genetic quality in human beings. There is evidence that support the notion that attractiveness is negatively associated to FFA. However, an important number of these studies have been carried out from the perspective of men´s ratings on female faces, and without considering if hormon...

Hardback, $85.00). _________________________________________________________ As suggested by its title, Evolution´s Empress (EE) is a fascinating academic account of women issues that may have been overlooked at the establishment of Evolutionary Psychology (EP) in the last decades, which now reach a critical stance of dialogue between largely oppos...

This overview of women's contribution to evolutionary thought reflects on a few of the groundbreaking ethologists, anthropologists, and psychologists that prominently contributed and continue to influence my own understanding of evolutionary psychology. Inspired by the highly popular account of Fossey's fieldwork on the social behavior of gorillas,...

El uso de anticonceptivos orales se encuentra masificado en la población Chilena (MINSAL e INE, 2002). Estudios efectuados en población anglosajona han encontrado diferencias sociosexuales entre mujeres que consumen anticonceptivos orales y aquellas que no lo hacen. Estas diferencias apuntan a un mayor número de parejas sexuales (Liale et al., 2002...

Background: Sexual behavior usually begins in adolescence, and is mediated by biological, personality and socio-cultural variables which can affect the expression of preventive and risky sexual performance, as well as sex and age differences. Aim: To determine sex differences in the age of sexual initiation, the use of protective methods and mate s...

Background: Sexual behavior usually begins in adolescence, and is mediated by biological, personality and socio-cultural variables which can affect the expression of preventive and risky sexual performance, as well as sex and age differences. Aim: To determine sex differences in the age of sexual initiation, the use ofprotective methods and mate se...

Durante el año 2011 se resolvieron los concursos FONDECYT regular 2012 y de Iniciación a la investigación 2011. En el concurso de Iniciación a la Investigación, se presentaron 525 proyectos, de los cuales fueron aprobaron 262. De estos, 7 corresponden a Psicología (de un total de 12 proyectos postulados), por un valor de 322.630 millones de pesos,...

During 2011 the Grants from FONDECYT for Regular Competitions 2012 and for Introduction to Research 2011 were resolved. For Introduction to Research, 525 projects was submitted and 262 projects were approved. Of these, 7 corresponded to Psychology (from a total of 12 projects nominated), with an amount of 322.630 million pesos, representing 2,3% of...

RESUMEN El presente estudio está dirigido a evaluar las propiedades psicométricas del Po-sitive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), una de las medidas de afectividad más utilizadas en la investigación inter-nacional, en una muestra de estudiantes chilenos, con la expectativa de encontrar resultados que esté...

RESUMEN El presente estudio está dirigido a evaluar las propiedades psicométricas del Po-sitive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), una de las medidas de afectividad más utilizadas en la investigación inter-nacional, en una muestra de estudiantes chilenos, con la expectativa de encontrar resultados que esté...

The present study is focused on the assessment of the psychometric properties of the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), one of the most recurring affectivity measures in international research, in a Chilean college sample, aiming at confirming the findings reported on the original validation study...

El origen adaptativo de las emociones humanas ha quedado evidenciado por la investigación actual, pero ha sido escasa la integración de la comprensión de fenómenos afectivos más complejos, como los celos románticos. Esta investigación aborda las predicciones de la Psicología evolucionaria acerca de la función de los celos, diseñando dos experimento...

The objective of this study is to compare the declared licit and illicit drug consumption, between paired methodology (MP) and self assessed questionnaire (CAR). We suggest that understatement of illicit drug use will be minimized with the use of peer methodology, and that licit drug understatement will not be affected using peer methodology. The p...

The objective of this study is to compare the declared licit and illicit drug consumption, between paired methodology (MP) and self assessed questionnaire (CAR). We suggest that understatement of illicit drug use will be minimized with the use of peer methodology, and that licit drug understatement will not he affected using peer methodology. The p...

The present study aimed to obtain a valid set of images of the International Affective Picture System (Lang, Bradley & Cuthbert, 2005) -a widely used instrumentation in emotion research- in a Chilean sample, as well as comparing these results with those obtained from the US study in order to con tribute to its cross-cultural validation. A sample of...

The goal of the present study is to estimate the psychometric properties of the Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire (SPSRQ; Torrubia, Avila, Moltó, & Caseras, 2001) in a sample of Chilean college students. The main hypothesis is that the instrument would show appropriate levels of reliability and validity, in light of...

The psychometric properties of Davis’ (1980) Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) in Chile were assessed. The IRI was applied to a sample of 435 college students. Appropriate internal consistencies and test-retest stability resulted. The instrument’s validity was evidenced by the interrelations among the scales, in addition to its correlations in t...

This work presents a mental health intervention aiming at providing emotional support of the population of Peralillo and its surroundings, due to the earthquake that occurred in Chile on February, 2010. The goals were to implement prevention and emotional contention based on the contact with the local community network. The design included 24 volun...