Ilan Dar-Nimrod

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Associate Professor at The University of Sydney

This article introduces the notion of genetic essentialist biases: cognitive biases associated with essentialist thinking that are elicited when people encounter arguments that genes are relevant for a behavior, condition, or social group. Learning about genetic attributions for various human conditions leads to a particular set of thoughts regardi...

References to death abound in many television programs accessible to most people. Terror Management Theory postulates that existential anxiety, which death reminders activate, may reinforce materialistic tendencies. The current article explores the effect of a death reminder in television shows on the desirability of advertised products. Consistent...

Some people are routinely described as "cool," but it is unknown whether this descriptor conveys trait-like information beyond mere likability or popularity. This is the first systematic quantitative investigation of coolness from a trait perspective. Three studies of North Americans (N = 918) converged to identify personality markers for coolness....

Some nonheterosexual individuals are eschewing lesbian/gay and bisexual identities for queer and pansexual identities. The present study aimed to examine the sexual and demographic characteristics of nonheterosexual individuals who adopt these labels. A convenience sample of 2,220 nonheterosexual (1,459 lesbian/gay, 413 bisexual, 168 queer, 146 pan...

Stereotype threat occurs when stereotyped groups perform worse as their group membership is highlighted. We investigated whether stereotype threat is affected by accounts for the origins of stereotypes. In two studies, women who read of genetic causes of sex differences performed worse on math tests than those who read of experiential causes.

Differences in the perceptions of illness between patients and caregivers are associated with negative health-related outcomes. However, little is known about the correlates of divergent perceptions of ADHD among diagnosed adolescents and their parents. This study applied the Common-Sense Model of Illness Representations (CSM) to examine how parent...

In the present work, we addressed the relationship between parental leave policies and social norms. Using a pre‐registered, cross‐national approach, we examined the relationship between parental leave policies and the perception of social norms for the gender division of childcare. In this study, 19,259 students (11,924 women) from 48 countries in...

Scientific research suggests that sexual orientation is continuous in nature and can be fluid over time. Relatively little is known about how greater mainstream acceptance of such accounts of sexual orientation may influence lay people’s attitudes toward gay/lesbian and bisexual individuals. Two studies (N1 = 180; N2 = 460) examined whether attitud...

According to the Behavioural Immune System (BIS) theory, humans are motivated to avoid exposureto harmful pathogens. However, most sources of infection are impossible to avoid completely, leadingto the development of tools to reduce pathogen threat. Condoms are one example of an effective toolthat can be used to avoid exposure to sexually transmitt...

Using data from 15 countries, this article investigates whether descriptive and prescriptive gender norms concerning housework and child care (domestic work) changed after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results of a total of 8,343 participants (M = 19.95, SD = 1.68) from two comparable student samples suggest that descriptive norms about unpai...

Background Knowledge of the genetic basis of health conditions can influence how the public perceives their own and others’ health. When there are known genetic associations for such conditions, genetic essentialist biases facilitate deterministic thinking and an over-emphasis of genetic causality. This study investigates the role that genetic esse...

How alcohol problems are represented, including as ‘Alcohol Use Disorder’ (AUD), has a broad set of implications for research, policy and practice. A biopsychosocial approach is commonly offered as a means of taking into account the various environmental and individual level factors that may contribute to so called mental and behavioural disorders...

In their recent primer (Hazardous drinking and alcohol use disorders. Nat. Rev. Dis. Prim. 2022 81 8, 1–25 (2022))1, MacKillop and colleagues present an extensive account of hazardous drinking and alcohol use disorder (AUD), purporting to take a biopsychosocial evaluation of causes and treatment. Whilst in agreement with much of the evidence presen...

Social gender transition is an increasingly accepted intervention for gender variant children and adolescents. To date, there is scant literature comparing the mental health of children and adolescents diagnosed with gender dysphoria who have socially transitioned versus those who are still living in their birth-assigned gender. We examined the men...

A body of research has shown that violent protests reduce support for social movements. However, few studies have examined whether the same is true for protests which are peaceful, yet disruptive (e.g., blocking traffic). Across two pre-registered experimental studies, we explored whether pro-vegan protests that are depicted as causing social disru...

Background: Growing research indicates that death anxiety is implicated in many mental health conditions. This increasing evidence highlights a need for scalable, accessible and cost-effective psychological interventions to reduce death anxiety. Aims: The present study outlines the results of a phase I trial for one such treatment: Overcome Deat...

Previous research has identified a range of perceptual voice and speech features that differ between gay and straight men, enabling listeners to determine if a man is gay or straight at a rate better than chance from his voice alone. To date, no published studies have examined if bisexual men's voices differ from gay and straight men's voices with...

Purpose: Abortion stigma is a barrier to accessing and delivering comprehensive, sustainable healthcare. This study aimed to systematically identify measures of abortion stigma, and assess their psychometric properties and uses. Materials and methods: The systematic review was preregistered with PROSPERO (ID#127339) and adhered to Preferred Reporti...

Despite global commitments and efforts, a gender‐based division of paid and unpaid work persists. To identify how psychological factors, national policies, and the broader sociocultural context contribute to this inequality, we assessed parental‐leave intentions in young adults (18–30 years old) planning to have children (N = 13,942; 8,880 identifi...

There is increased acceptance of gay men in most Western societies. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that feminine-presenting gay men are still disadvantaged compared to gay men who present in a more traditionally masculine way. Though gay men themselves may be complicit in perpetuating this bias, studies that demonstrate this possibility are scant....

Whilst algorithmic decision-making systems (ADMS) become increasingly pertinent across several contexts, many remain reluctant to adopt such systems, preferring human alternatives – often explored as “Algorithm Aversion”. However, the associated literature primarily frames this tendency in a utility-focused fashion, based on users’ perceptions of e...

Research has found that sexual orientation beliefs predict heterosexuals’ attitudes toward sexual minorities, and important sexual identity outcomes in sexual minority populations. To this point, no studies have systematically examined how sexual orientation beliefs may be associated with sexual identity self-labeling among sexual minority individu...

Introduction Knowledge of the genetic basis of health conditions can influence how the public perceives their own and others’ health. When there are known genetic associations for such conditions, genetic essentialist biases facilitate deterministic thinking and an over-emphasis of genetic causality. This study investigates the role that genetic es...

Uchiyama et al. question heritability estimates in a convincing manner. We offer additional arguments to further bolster their claims, highlighting methodological issues in heritability coefficients' derivation, their misuse in various contexts, and their potential contributions to exacerbating common erroneous intuitions that have been shown to le...

Objectives: Research spanning the fields of clinical, social and health psychology suggests that death anxiety is an important construct. However, no comprehensive, psychometrically adequate measure of the construct exists. The current studies outline the development of a new measure of death anxiety, the Death Anxiety Beliefs and Behaviours Scale...

Terror Management Theory (TMT) is the dominant social psychological theory examining the relationship between death awareness and human behaviour. According to TMT, cultural worldviews and self-esteem are thought to serve an important anxiety-buffering function in order to manage (or ‘tranquilise’) existential fear of death. This chapter reviews th...

The current study examined whether Australian cisgender women who identify as bisexual or pansexual differ in their experience of minority stress, and, in turn, psychological distress and well-being. A convenience sample of 229 Australian cisgender women who identified as bisexual or pansexual responded to a survey assessing minority stressors and...

Past research has identified shifts in the demographics and co-occurring mental health issues of youth referred to certain gender dysphoria services. The present study examined shifts in demographics (age, sex and social transition status), social adversity (bullying experiences and abuse) and psychological functioning (mood, anxiety, suicidality a...

Uchiyama et al. question heritability estimates in a convincing manner. We offer additional arguments to further bolster their claims, highlighting methodological issues in heritability coefficients’ derivation, their misuse in various contexts, and their potential contributions to exacerbating common erroneous intuitions that have been shown to le...

Emerging research suggests that death anxiety is a transdiagnostic construct, which may underpin a number of mental illnesses. Although cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) has been found to be the most effective treatment for death anxiety, no self-guided treatments for this construct exist at present. Furthermore, there is a growing need for accessi...

We examined whether heterosexual individuals’ self-reported sexual orientation could be influenced experimentally by manipulating their knowledge of the nature of sexual orientation. In Study 1 (180 university students, 66% female) participants read summaries describing evidence for sexual orientation existing on a continuum versus discrete categor...

Past research has identified shifts in the demographics and co-occurring mental health issues of youth referred to certain gender dysphoria services. The present study examined shifts in demographics (age, sex, social transition status), social adversity (bullying experiences and abuse), and psychological functioning (mood, anxiety, suicidality, an...

We examined whether heterosexual individuals’ self-reported sexual orientation could be influenced experimentally by manipulating their knowledge of the nature of sexual orientation. In Study 1 (180 university students, 66% female) participants read summaries describing evidence for sexual orientation existing on a continuum versus discrete categor...

Emerging research suggests that death anxiety is a transdiagnostic construct, which may underpin a number of mental illnesses. Although CBT has been found to be the most effective treatment for death anxiety, no self-guided treatments for this construct exist at present. Further, there is a growing need for accessible, scalable, and cost-effective...

Résumé Les préservatifs sont des outils importants pour combattre la propagation des infections sexuellement transmissibles (IST). Malgré le fait que les préservatifs sont efficaces et facilement accessibles, les jeunes adultes rapportent une utilisation de préservatifs inconsistante et les jeunes adultes représentent un nombre disproportionné des...

Early Life and Educational Background Dar-Nimrod was born on January 31, 1972, in Haifa, Israel. He grew up in Israel completing his primary and secondary education in Haifa before serving in the Israeli Defense Forces as an infantry soldier and commander, a period in which he also resided in two kibbutzim. After completing a year in law school, Da...

Accumulated empirical evidence suggests that death anxiety is strongly associated with multiple mental health conditions. Despite this, few studies have experimentally explored whether manipulating reminders of death could influence the symptoms of mental illnesses. The present, preregistered study used a mortality salience design to assess whether...

Purpose Genetic research, via the mainstream media, presents the public with novel, profound findings almost on a daily basis. However, it is not clear how much laypeople understand these presentations and how they integrate such new findings into their knowledge base. Genetic knowledge (GK), existing causal beliefs, and genetic essentialist tenden...

Objectives A body of research has demonstrated high rates of comorbidity among individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Further, recent empirical evidence has demonstrated the relevance of death anxiety in OCD. Given that the trajectory towards OCD remains unclear, the current study aimed to examine which disorders individuals typicall...

Recent theoretical and empirical research has demonstrated a relationship between death anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), with a focus on compulsive washing. However, no study has examined whether death anxiety plays an important role across various symptom domains of OCD. The present studies explored the relationship between death a...

Recent literature has described the phenomenon of “straight-acting” gay men: gay men who identify with traditional heteronormative masculinity. The current study examined predictors of “straight-acting” identification in gay men and how identifying as straight-acting relates to well-being. A sample of Australian gay men (N = 966) provided self-repo...

Past visual attention research appears to show that bisexual men and women view erotic images differently compared to heterosexual and gay/lesbian men and women. However, none of these studies have employed analytic approaches required to determine whether these apparent bisexual viewing patterns are due to averaging together heterosexual and gay/l...

The “viral” nature of information transmission has the potential to transmit both accurate and inaccurate information. The present experiment examines the social transmission of health information, focusing on disorder etiology. Participants were placed in one of three generations of social transmission chains. The first generation read information...

Previous theory suggests that women’s sexual response patterns are more dependent on cultural context than men’s. However, there is little empirical data on culture-based sexual responding between women versus men using psychophysiological methods. In this study, we used eye-tracking to compare the visual attention patterns to explicit sexual stimu...

Previous theory suggests that women’s sexual response patterns are more dependent on cultural context than men’s. However, there is little empirical data on culture-based sexual responding between women versus men using psychophysiological methods. In this study, we used eye-tracking to compare the visual attention patterns to explicit sexual stimu...

Research into the causes and outcomes of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been extensive, yet little is known about the perception of ADHD as a disorder and its related outcomes among diagnosed youth. The present study applied the Common-Sense Model of Illness Representations (CSM) to examine the perception of ADHD and its associ...

Individuals who report mostly heterosexual orientations (i.e., mostly sexually attracted to the opposite sex, but occasionally attracted to the same sex) outnumber all other non-heterosexual individuals combined. The present study examined whether mostly heterosexual men and women view same- and other-sex sexual stimuli differently than exclusively...

Death anxiety has been implicated theoretically and empirically in mental health, and has been proposed to be a transdiagnostic construct. However, it has largely been investigated in relation to specific disorders, such as obsessive compulsive disorder. Few studies have assessed the relationship between death anxiety and psychopathology using hete...

Biased transmission of health knowledge has far-reaching effects on information reproduction and health-related cognitions. We examined whether transmissions of different types of disorder and etiological information influence recollections of health knowledge and evaluations of patients, by simulating the digital transmission of information. Trans...

When explaining the causes of human behavior, genes are often given a special status. They are thought to relate to an intrinsic human ‘essence’, and essentialist biases have been shown to skew the way in which causation is assessed. Causal reasoning in general is subject to other pre-existing biases, including beliefs about normativity and moralit...

Background: Genetic knowledge, which plays important functions in our understanding of science, health, social groupings, and even behaviour, has been evaluated in past studies with various populations. This wide reach of genetics means that different types of items are used to assess genetic knowledge, which restricts meaningful comparisons acros...

Background: Genetic knowledge, which plays important functions in our understanding of science, health, social groupings, and even behaviour, has been evaluated in past studies with various populations. This wide reach of genetics means that different types of items are used to assess genetic knowledge, which restricts meaningful comparisons across...

Death anxiety has been proposed as a transdiagnostic construct, underlying numerous mental disorders. Although it has been argued that treatments, which reduce death anxiety, are needed, research investigating the impact of interventions on death fears has produced mixed results. As such, the current meta-analysis aimed to examine the effect of psy...

In the version of this Letter originally published, acknowledgement of funding for the authors Annika M. Svedholm-Häkkinen and Tapani Riekki by the Academy of Finland was mistakenly omitted. This has now been included in the Acknowledgements section of the Letter.

Religious belief is a topic of longstanding interest to psychological science, but the psychology of religious disbelief is a relative newcomer. One prominently discussed model is analytic atheism, wherein cognitive reflection, as measured with the Cognitive Reflection Test, overrides religious intuitions and instruction. Consistent with this model...

Research on children and parents’ experiences of ADHD has grown in recent years, attracting attention to their subjective perception of ADHD as a disorder. Theoretical accounts of illness perception suggest that it is multi-dimensional, consisting of at least five core constructs (see the common-sense model of illness representations or CSM: Levent...

As coolness is often associated with status elevation and socially desirable valuation, understanding what entails coolness may prove useful in a myriad of contexts. In this study, we tested the two-factor model of coolness proposed by Dar-Nimrod et al. (2012), where Cachet and Contrarian domains of coolness are comprised of 14 facets (e.g., irony,...

Non-monosexual women (i.e. those attracted to more than one gender) may encounter distinct sexual orientation-based challenges depending on the gender of their current relationship partner. Literature suggests that non-monosexual women in relationships with a male partner may often be assumed to be heterosexual by default, and may struggle with inv...

Religious belief is a topic of longstanding interest to psychological science, but the psychology of religious disbelief is a relative newcomer. One prominently discussed model is analytic atheism, wherein analytic thinking overrides religious intuitions and instruction. Consistent with this model, performance-based measures of reliance on analytic...

This study sought to test the effect of genetic information and information about the caffeine content of a beverage on caffeine withdrawal, specifically if: (1) being informed that one has tested positive for a gene related to caffeine withdrawal can produce an exaggerated caffeine withdrawal response during abstinence; (2) belief that one has con...

Students’ educational outcomes are predicted by their noncognitive characteristics, including Big Five personality domains. Although theories of teaching and learning suggest that teacher noncognitive characteristics also impact student outcomes, such characteristics are rarely studied systematically. We propose that the Big Five personality domain...

Mounting evidence supports long-standing claims that religions can extend cooperative networks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 . However, religious prosociality may have a strongly parochial component 5 . Moreover, aspects of religion may promote or exacerbate conflict with those outside a given religious group, promoting regional violence 10 , intergroup confli...

In this study, we examined how beliefs about the nature and origin of sexual orientation were associated with sexual identity outcomes, namely internalized sexual stigma and sexual orientation uncertainty, and in turn, psychological well-being in sexual minority women. A community sample of 393 lesbian and 205 bisexual women were recruited for a cr...

The studies presented in this article explored the relevance of death fears to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). In Study 1, the relationships between death anxiety and a variety of markers of psychopathology were examined in 171 treatment-seeking participants with OCD. Moderate to large correlations between Collett-Lester Fear of Death scale sc...

We propose that people are genetic essentialists—that is, they tend to think of genetic attributions as being immutable, of a specific etiology, natural, and dividing people into homogenous and discrete groups. Although there are rare conditions where genes operate in these kinds of deterministic ways, people overgeneralize from these to the far mo...

The idea that differentiated selves almost always improve group outcomes is overly simplistic. We argue that it is essential to distinguish between two distinct elements of differentiated selves – identifiability and specialization – and to identify conditions under which they influence group outcomes. Adopting a group-by-situation perspective, in...

The present study examined essentialist beliefs about sexual orientation and their implications for sexual identity uncertainty, internalized homonegativity and psychological wellbeing in a sample of gay men. A combination of targeted sampling and snowball strategies were used to recruit 639 gay identifying men for a cross-sectional online survey....

The present study examined essentialist beliefs about sexual orientation and their implications for sexual identity uncertainty, internalized homonegativity and psychological wellbeing in a sample of gay men. A combination of targeted sampling and snowball strategies were used to recruit 639 gay identifying men for a cross-sectional online survey....

Abstract Objective: To determine whether lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) Australians residing in ruralremote and other non-inner metropolitan localities experience increased levels of minority stress and reduced social support relative to their inner metropolitan counterparts. Methods: A convenience sample of (n=1306) LGB Australians completed an o...

With the increasing popularity and affordability of DNA sequencing through direct-to-consumer DNA sequencing services, it has become apparent that researchers need to understand how the results of sequencing one's DNA affects consumers psychologically and behaviorally. In this paper, the authors discuss several intrapersonal processes that may impa...

People hold diverse beliefs regarding the etiologies of individual and group differences in behaviors which, in turn, might affect their attitudes and behaviors. It is important to establish how perceived etiologies of smoking might affect the effectiveness of policy initiatives and prevention efforts. The present study assessed whether exposure to...

Objective: This paper aimed to compare the experience of sexual orientation based stressors (sexual minority stress) and community connectedness amongst lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) Australian's residing in metropolitan vs. rural localities. Methods: A convenience sample of LGB Australian's completed an online survey which assessed sexual minori...

Both apolipoprotein E (ApoE) ε-4 allele(s) and elevated trait neuroticism, the tendency to experience distress, are associated with cognitive function among older adults. We predicted that neuroticism moderates the association between ApoE and cognitive function and also explored whether other personality dimensions (openness to experience, agreeab...

OBJECTIVES:: We tested the hypothesis that neuroticism moderates the association between APOE (apolipoprotein E) genotype and two major outcomes, cognitive function and Alzheimer disease. We also explored whether other personality dimensions (extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) moderate the associations of AP...

Traditional lay perceptions of genetics are plagued with essentialist biases leading to some unfortunate consequences. Changes in the scientific understanding of heredity in general, and in genotype-phenotype relationships more specifically, provide a vital basis for shifting public understanding of genetics. Facilitating postgenomic literacy among...

Purpose: Increased accessibility of direct-to-consumer personalized genetic reports raises the question: how are people affected by information about their own genetic predispositions? Methods: Participants were led to believe that they had entered a study on the genetics of alcoholism and sleep disorders. Participants provided a saliva sample p...

Evolutionary psychology accounts of gender differences in sexual behaviors in general and men's sexual aggression, in particular, has been criticized for legitimizing males' sexual misconduct. To empirically assess such critiques, two studies examined how men's judgments of male sex crimes (solicitation of sex from a prostitute; rape) are influence...

In the target article (Dar-Nimrod & Heine, 2011), we provided a social-cognitive framework which identified genetic essentialist biases and their implications. In their commentaries, Haslam (2011) and Turkheimer (2011) indicated their general agreement with this framework but highlighted some important points for consideration. Haslam suggested tha...

Contrary to the common belief that more options lead to better decisions, recent research has demonstrated that choosing from a large number of options can have detrimental psychological effects. We investigated whether people were willing to sacrifice resources for more options, and whether choice-making orientation moderated such willingness. As...

Religious and non-religious individuals differ in theircore beliefs. The religious endorse a supernatural, divinely inspired view of the world, while the non-religious hold largely secular worldviews. As a result they may respond differently to existential threats. Three studies confirmed this prediction. After a mortality salience (MS) or control...

Are women really less gifted at math or are they being influenced by preconceived ideas about their performance?