April Bleske-Rechek

University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire | UWEC · College of Arts and Sciences

Some of the most controversial information in psychology involves genetic or evolutionary explanations for sex differences in educational-vocational outcomes (Clark et al., 2024a). We investigated whether men and women react differently to controversial information about sex differences and whether their reaction depends on who provides the informa...

Science is among humanity’s greatest achievements, yet scientific censorship is rarely studied empirically. We explore the social, psychological, and institutional causes and consequences of scientific censorship (defined as actions aimed at obstructing particular scientific ideas from reaching an audience for reasons other than low scientific qual...

Merit is a central pillar of liberal epistemology, humanism, and democracy. The scientific enterprise, built on merit, has proven effective in generating scientific and technological advances, reducing suffering, narrowing social gaps, and improving the quality of life globally. This perspective documents the ongoing attempts to undermine the core...

When a romantic relationship ends, individuals often look back and wish they would have done things differently. What may seem clear in hindsight, however, is often unclear in foresight. We investigated the effects of outcome knowledge on individuals’ judgments of a dating couple. In Study 1 (N1 = 181 U.S. college students, N2 = 334 U.S. community...

One manifestation of society's increased sensitivity and reactivity to harm is the notion that words can be labeled as harmful, regardless of how subtle and regardless of their intent, if perceived as harmful by the receiver of that speech (Haslam, 2016). However, it is unclear what specific words should be considered harmful, particularly if harm...

We extend Benenson et al.'s hypothesis from the individual level to the societal level. Because women have highly limited reproductive rates, societies have generally prioritized female survival and regarded males as expendable. We describe various lines of evidence that are consistent with this hypothesis, and we offer additional predictions about...

Sex differences in the use of competitive tactics have been well established. Although many factors may contribute to these sex differences, according to social role theory (SRT), stereotypes and expectations about men's and women's typical social roles are crucial. We addressed the potential impact of social roles by studying massively multiplayer...

In the 1980s, psychologists extended attachment theory into the domain of adult romantic bonds by proposing that romantic love can be conceptualized as a process of becoming attached ( Hazan & Shaver, 1987 ). From this perspective, individuals differ in two primary attachment dimensions: anxiety, the extent to which they worry about abandonment in...

In the United States, women continue to spend more time than men do on household labor and childcare (Parker & Wang, 2013). Although these gender disparities in time use are lamented in the media as inequitable (Miller, 2020; Rao, 2019), differences in men’s and women’s preferences may help explain the disparities. In the current study, emerging ad...

Despite recent interest in online learning, systematic comparisons of online learning environments with traditional classroom environments are limited, particularly in the sciences. Here, we report on a systematic comparison of an online and face-to-face classroom for a sophomore-level, lecture-only introductory inorganic chemistry course that is d...

The human tendency to judge another person's personality traits can be prompted by as little as a snapshot of that person, and such judgments can have consequences for future interactions (Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid, 1977). We tested the hypothesis that people make judgments about others' personality traits – particularly those desired by employers...

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...

Women's body attractiveness is influenced by specific anthropometric cues, including body mass index (BMI), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), waist-to-stature ratio (WSR), and shoulder-to-waist ratio (SWR). Despite the existence of multiple functional hypotheses to explain these preferences, it remains unclear which cue-based inferences are most influentia...

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...

When young adults are asked to either think of an opposite-sex friend or bring an opposite-sex friend to the lab, men report much more attraction to their friend than women do (Bleske-Rechek et al., 2012; Kaplan and Keys, 1997). In two studies, we utilized a naturalistic sampling strategy to obtain our friendship dyads. We approached and surveyed m...

To investigate asymmetries in opposite-sex friends’ attractiveness and attraction, researchers approached, surveyed, and photographed 77 male-female dyads (friends as well as romantic couples) in a high-traffic lounging area. In this naturally-occurring sample, attraction between opposite-sex friends varied widely and was not mutual, whereas attrac...

The various milestones and transitions of emerging adulthood have led previous researchers to investigate continuity and change in personality traits during this life period. In the current study, we build on that research by investigating continuity and change during emerging adulthood in mate preferences and mating orientations. Following past re...

ABSTRACT The human tendency to conflate correlation with causation has been lamented by various scientists (Kida, 2006; Stanovich, 2009), and vivid examples of it can be found in both the media and peer-reviewed literature. However, there is little systematic data on the extent to which individuals conflate correlation with causation. In three expe...

Women's faces and bodies are both thought to provide cues to women's age, health, fertility, and personality. To gain a stronger understanding of how these cues are utilized, we investigated the degree to which ratings of women's faces and bodies independently predicted ratings of women's full-body attractiveness. Women came into the lab not knowin...

Assumptions about the effects of birth order on personality abound in popular culture and self-help books. Indeed, when one sibling is asked to compare themselves to others in their family, birth order shows weak-to-moderate effects on personality (e.g., and ). No study to date, however, has utilized a complete within-family design that includes in...

The human tendency to affiliate with similar others is manifested in a variety of interpersonal relationships, including same-sex friendships. We propose that similarity between female friends in physical attractiveness entails both benefits and costs, with one cost being the potential for mating rivalry. In this chapter we discuss previous researc...

We propose that, because cross-sex friendships are a historically recent phenomenon, men’s and women’s evolved mating strategies impinge on their friendship experiences. In our first study involving pairs of friends, emerging adult males reported more attraction to their friend than emerging adult females did, regardless of their own or their frien...

Women in Western societies have made enormous gains in education and labor force involvement since the middle of the twentieth century. Various gender differences persist, however. For example, young men and women in the United States continue to differ in their plans for work and family, with women more likely than men to choose careers that will...

At the same time as some faculty committees and corporations are appealing to the use of online ratings from RateMyProfessors.com to inform promotion decisions and nationwide university rankings, others are derogating the site as an unreliable source of idiosyncratic student ratings and commentary. In this paper we describe a study designed to test...

We investigated women's facial attractiveness and body shape as a function of menstrual cycle phase, with the expectation from previous research that both would be enhanced during the high fertile phase. To control for the effects of women's daily behaviors on their appearance and waistline, we visited 37 normally cycling women twice in their dorm,...

We investigated men’s and women’s responses to variations of an ethical thought experiment known as the Trolley Problem. In the original Trolley Problem, readers must decide whether they will save the lives of five people tied to a track by pulling a lever to sacrifice the life of one person tied to an alternate track. According to W. D. Hamilton's...

Past research suggests that young women perceive their same-sex friends as both facilitating the pursuit of desirable mates and competing for access to desirable mates. We propose that similar levels of physical attractiveness between young adult female friends might be one explanation for the opposing forces in their friendships. Forty-six female...

Since its inception in 1999, the RateMyProfessors.com (RMP.com) website has grown in popularity and, with that, notoriety. In this research we tested three assumptions about the website: (1) Students use RMP.com to either rant or rave; (2) Students who post on RMP.com are different from students who do not post; and (3) Students reward easiness by...

Past research on married couples has documented positive assortment on cognitive abilities, attractiveness and physical features, attitudes and values, and, to a lesser degree, personality. in the current study, we proposed that if partners mate assortatively rather than converge over time, then assortative mating coefficients for dating couples sh...

We conducted three studies to (1) investigate individuals' beliefs about change in mating desires over the course of emerging adulthood and (2) determine whether those beliefs reflect actual variation in mating desires among emerging adults of varied ages (late teens through twenties). In Study 1, 103 men and women gave their thoughts on how colleg...

Narcissists think they are more knowledgeable, better leaders, and more attractive than others are. Higher narcissism scores in celebrities than in non-celebrities (Young & Pinsky, 2006) raise the question of whether narcissistic individuals actually are, to some degree, more knowledgeable or attractive than other individuals are. Because little re...

Humans differ from many other primates in the apparent absence of obvious advertisements of fertility within the ovulatory cycle. However, recent studies demonstrate increases in women's sexual motivation near ovulation, raising the question of whether human ovulation could be marked by observable changes in overt behavior. Using a sample of 30 par...

Two studies tested evolutionary hypotheses about the use and perceived effectiveness of specific mate attraction tactics as a function of sexual strategy pursued. Participants and a close same-sex friend of each participant reported on the participant’s sexual strategy and deployment of attraction tactics. In Study 1, participants’ mate attraction...

Talent-search participants (286 males, 94 females) scoring in the top 0.01% on cognitive-ability measures were identified before age 13 and tracked over 20 years. Their creative, occupational, and life accomplishments are compared with those of graduate students (299 males, 287 females) enrolled in top-ranked U.S. mathematics, engineering, and phys...

Past research implicates adaptations in women to assess men's willingness to invest in offspring (La Cerra, 1995). In two new studies, women's evaluations of an opposite-sex target as a long-term partner and short-term sex partner were negatively impacted by viewing that target ignore a baby in distress; this effect occurred for men in Study 1 only...

We evaluated the Advanced Placement (AP) pro- gram from the point of view of intellectually precocious youth and their subsequent educational-vocational outcomes, analyz- ing normative and idiographic longitudinal data collected across 30 years from 3,937 participants. Most took AP courses in high school, and those who did frequently nominated an A...

Comments on the article by M. E. Kite et al (see record 2001-10045-002), which summarized the findings and recommendations of the Task Force on the Status of Women in Academe. The present authors contend that while Kite et al documented the differences in the activities of men and women in academia, it is not clear that "inequalities persist." Kite...

Sperm competition occurs when the sperm of two or more males simultaneously occupy the reproductive tract of a female and compete to fertilize an egg. We used a questionnaire to investigate psychological responses to the risk of sperm competition for 194 men in committed, sexual relationships in the United States and in Germany. As predicted, a man...

Sixty-five undergraduates participated in a small-group activity designed to help them apply the findings from classic studies of conformity, obedience, and social roles. Students designed and demonstrated a study to illustrate the influence of obedience, conformity, or social roles in a real-life context. Each group generated 3 variables and descr...

The authors hypothesized that people form opposite-sex friendships (OSFs), in part, to acquire long-term mates (both sexes), to gain short-term sexual access (men more than women), and to gain physical protection (women more than men). In Study 1, men and women evaluated reasons for initiating OSFs, characteristics preferred in an OSF, and reasons...