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Introduction
Current institution
Additional affiliations
August 2001 - present
University of Zagreb; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Position
- Professor (Associate)
September 2012 - May 2020
Editor roles
Publications
Publications (159)
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...
Parietal alpha and theta power predict cognitive training gains in middle-aged adults. Research on executive functions training shows inconsistent outcomes, with factors like age, baseline cognitive abilities, and personality traits implicated as predictive of training gains, while limited attention has been given to neurophysiological markers. The...
Background/Objectives: Cognitive training paradigms rely on the idea that consistent practice can drive neural plasticity, improving not only connectivity within critical brain networks, but also ultimately result in overall enhancement of trained cognitive functions, irrespective of the specific task. Here we opted to investigate the temporal dyna...
Background and purpose: Behavioral immune system is a cluster of psychological mechanisms enabling detection and avoidance of pathogens in one’s immediate environment. Its presumed activation has been implicated in myriads of psychological phenomena, stemming from pathogen related disgust to more complex behaviors, such as mate choice and xenophobi...
Epistemically suspect beliefs, such as endorsement of conspiracy theories or pseudoscientific claims, are widespread even among highly educated individuals. The phenomenon of conspiratorial thinking is not new, yet the COVID-19 pandemic, causing a global health crisis of an unprecedented scale, facilitated the emergence and rapid spread of some rat...
The behavioral immune system (BIS) refers to a set of evolved psychological mechanisms designed to detect cues of potential pathogen threat and trigger self-protective, avoidant behaviors. However, like all adaptations, the BIS carries potential costs alongside its benefits. This study aimed to examine the impact of BIS-related processes on mental...
Love is commonly hypothesized to function as an evolved commitment device, disincentivizing the pursuit of romantic alternatives and signaling this motivational shift to a partner. Here, we test this possibility against a novel signaling-to-alternatives account, in which love instead operates by dissuading alternatives from pursuing oneself. Overal...
Background and aims: Despite the last decade’s significant development in the scientific study of work addiction/workaholism, this
area of research is still facing a fundamental challenge, namely
the need for a valid and reliable measurement tool that shows
cross-cultural invariance and, as such, allows for worldwide studies
on this phenomenon. Met...
Intermittent fasting is being popularized as a method beneficial not only for weight loss, but also for overall psychological functioning and well-being. However, there is only a handful of studies examining the latter claims. The aim of this open-label study was to contribute to the understanding of the relationship between fasting-based diets, an...
Previous studies have found a negative relationship between creativity and conservatism. However, as these studies were mostly conducted on samples of homogeneous nationality, the generalizability of the effect across different cultures is unknown. We addressed this gap by conducting a study in 28 countries. Based on the notion that attitudes can b...
Previous studies have found a negative relationship between creativity and conservatism. However, as these studies were mostly conducted on samples of homogeneous nationality, the generalizability of the effect across different cultures is unknown. We addressed this gap by conducting a study in 28 countries. Based on the notion that attitudes can b...
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...
The activational effects of sex hormones on spatial ability have been well documented. It has been suggested that these effects might be related to hormonally induced changes in interhemispheric communication. In this EEG study, we opted to explore menstrual cycle-related changes in the efficacy of solving mental rotation tasks and laterality indic...
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the introduction of unprecedented safety measures, one of them being physical distancing recommendations. Here, we assessed whether the pandemic has led to long-term effects on two important physical distancing aspects, namely interpersonal distance preferences and interpersonal touch behaviors. We analyzed nearly 1...
Touch is the primary way people communicate intimacy in romantic relationships, and affectionate touch behaviors such as stroking, hugging and kissing are universally observed in partnerships all over the world. Here, we explored the association of love and affectionate touch behaviors in romantic partnerships in two studies comprising 7880 partici...
The anti-scientific and anti-vaccine movements gained momentum amidst the health and socio-economic crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. These widespread pseudoscientific beliefs and the endorsement of conspiracy theories likely contributed to the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. The aim of this study was to explore which variables best differ...
Recent cross-cultural and neuro-hormonal investigations have suggested that love is a near universal phenomenon that has a biological background. Therefore, the remaining important question is not whether love exists worldwide but which cultural, social, or environmental factors influence experiences and expressions of love. In the present study, w...
Clinically oriented studies of mood as a function of the menstrual cycle mainly address the negative moods in the premenstrual phase of the cycle. However, a periovulatory increase in positive emotions and motivations related to reproduction has also been noted. Thus, it has been suggested that the drop in mood during the luteal phase of the menstr...
Everyday Problems Test (EPT; Willis and Marsiske, Manual for the everyday problems test, Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, 1993) is an 84-item performance-based measure of older adults' everyday cognitive competencies in seven everyday domains (e.g., finance, reading prescription). Its length makes it disadvantageous in the typical time-...
People across the world and throughout history have gone to great lengths to enhance their physical appearance. Evolutionary psychologists and ethologists have largely attempted to explain this phenomenon via mating preferences and strategies. Here, we test one of the most popular evolutionary hypotheses for beauty-enhancing behaviors, drawn from m...
People across the world and throughout history have gone to great lengths to enhance their physical appearance. Evolutionary psychologists and ethologists have largely attempted to explain this phenomenon via mating preferences and strategies. Here, we test one of the most popular evolutionary hypotheses for beauty-enhancing behaviors, drawn from m...
People across the world and throughout history have gone to great lengths to enhance their physical appearance. Evolutionary psychologists and ethologists have largely attempted to explain this phenomenon via mating preferences and strategies. Here, we test one of the most popular evolutionary hypotheses for beauty-enhancing behaviors, drawn from m...
The COVID-19 restrictions have impacted people’s lifestyles in all spheres (social, psychological, political, economic, and others). This study explored which factors affected the level of anxiety during the time of the first wave of COVID-19 and subsequent quarantine in a substantial proportion of 23 countries, included in this study. The data was...
The COVID-19 restrictions have impacted people’s lifestyles in all spheres (social,
psychological, political, economic, and others). This study explored which factors
affected the level of anxiety during the time of the first wave of COVID-19 and
subsequent quarantine in a substantial proportion of 23 countries, included in this
study. The data was...
Background and purpose: Behavioral immune system is a cluster of psychological mechanisms enabling detection and avoidance of pathogens in one’s immediate environment. Its presumed activation has been implicated in myriads of psychological phenomena, stemming from pathogen related disgust to more complex behaviors, such as mate choice and xenophobi...
U ovoj monografiji prikazani su preliminarni nalazi drugog vala istraživanja Kako smo? provedenog krajem 2020. godine, koji pokazuju kakvo je psihološko stanje građana Hrvatske i kako su se s pandemijom COVID-19 i potresom u Zagrebu nosile osobe svih generacija i u različitim životnim ulogama: od učenika i studenata, preko osoba u vezi i samaca, ro...
The behavioural immune system (BIS) refers to a wide array of affective and cognitive processes that motivate pathogen and disease avoidance. Even though general research in this area is steadily growing, there is only a small number of studies dealing with the physiological aspects of BIS. The goal of this study was to assess the activation of the...
p>Epistemically suspect beliefs, such as endorsement of conspiracy theories or pseudoscientific claims are widespread even among highly educated individuals. The phenomenon of conspiratorial thinking is not new, yet the COVID-19 pandemic, causing a global health crisis of an unprecedented scale, facilitated the emergence and rapid spread of some ra...
p>Epistemically suspect beliefs, such as endorsement of conspiracy theories or pseudoscientific claims are widespread even among highly educated individuals. The phenomenon of conspiratorial thinking is not new, yet the COVID-19 pandemic, causing a global health crisis of an unprecedented scale, facilitated the emergence and rapid spread of some ra...
As implied by many and explicitly stated by Florida (2002), „human creativity is the ultimate economic resource.“ However, just like human knowledge, which is one of the preconditions for creativity to occur, creativity does not happen out of thin air. It has its foundations, triggers and constituents. The aim of this conceptual paper is to discuss...
A wide range of literature connects sex ratio and mating behaviours in non-human animals. However, research examining sex ratio and human mating is limited in scope. Prior work has examined the relationship between sex ratio and desire for short-term, uncommitted mating as well as outcomes such as marriage and divorce rates. Less empirical attentio...
As implied by many and explicitly stated by Florida (2002), „human creativity is the ultimate economic resource.“ However, just like human knowledge, which is one of the preconditions for creativity to occur, creativity does not happen out of thin air. It has its foundations, triggers and constituents. Consequently, it can be developed and fostered...
A wide range of literature connects sex ratio and mating
behaviours in non-human animals. However, research
examining sex ratio and human mating is limited in
scope. Prior work has examined the relationship between
sex ratio and desire for short-term, uncommitted mating
as well as outcomes such as marriage and divorce rates.
Less empirical attentio...
A wide range of literature connects sex ratio and mating behaviours in non-human animals. However, research examining sex ratio and human mating is limited in scope. Prior work has examined the relationship between sex ratio and desire for short-term, uncommitted mating as well as outcomes such as marriage and divorce rates. Less empirical attentio...
The COVID-19 pandemic has spread throughout the world, and concerns about psychological, social, and economic consequences are growing rapidly. Individuals’ empathy-based reactions towards others may be an important resilience factor in the face of COVID-19. Self-report data from 15,375 participants across 23 countries were collected from May to Au...
Insular populations have traditionally drawn a lot of attention from epidemiologists as they provide important insights regarding transmission of infectious diseases and propagation of epidemics. There are numerous historical instances where isolated populations showed high morbidity once a new virus entered the population. Building upon that and r...
Protection motivation theory (PMT) is a theoretical framework informative for understanding behavioral intentions and choices during exceptional and uncommon circumstances, such as a pandemic of respiratory infectious disease. PMT postulates both the threat appraisal and the coping appraisal as predictors of health behaviors. Recent advances in the...
Prior and ongoing COVID-19 pandemic restrictions have resulted in substantial changes to everyday life. The pandemic and measures of its control affect mental health negatively. Self-reported data from 15,375 participants from 23 countries were collected from May to August 2020 during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two questionnaires me...
Prior and ongoing COVID-19 pandemic restrictions have resulted in substantial changes to everyday life. The pandemic and measures of its control affect mental health negatively. Self-reported data from 15,375 participants from 23 countries were collected from May to August 2020 during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two questionnaires me...
Prior and ongoing COVID-19 pandemic restrictions have resulted in substantial changes to everyday life. The pandemic and measures of its control affect mental health negatively. Self-reported data from 15,375 participants from 23 countries were collected from May to August 2020 during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two questionnaires me...
Interpersonal touch behavior differs across cultures, yet no study to date has systematically tested for cultural variation in affective touch, nor examined the factors that might account for this variability. Here, over 14,000 individuals from 45 countries were asked whether they embraced, stroked, kissed, or hugged their partner, friends, and you...
Across the world, millions of couples get married each year. One of the strongest predictors of whether partners will remain in their relationship is their reported satisfaction. Marital satisfaction is commonly found to be a key predictor of both individual and relational well-being. Despite its importance in predicting relationship longevity, the...
The Triangular Theory of Love (measured with Sternberg’s Triangular Love Scale – STLS) is a prominent theoretical concept in empirical research on love. To expand the culturally homogeneous body of previous psychometric research regarding the STLS, we conducted a large-scale cross-cultural study with the use of this scale. In total, we examined mor...
It is no news that evolutionary behavioral sciences have been received with skepticism, in both popular and scientific outlets. Interestingly, even though evolutionary behavioral scientists traditionally aim to provide the ultimate explanations of behavior, they lag behind in applying the same level of causation in explaining the cold reception of...
Preliminary results of psychological effects of corona virus disease on children, adults and elderly in Croatia. Study on over 3500 participants from 7 to 95 years reports results on depressive, anxious and stress reactions, attitudes on anti COVID-19 measures and many other aspects of life during lock-down and afterwards.
The Kako smo? project, de...
Considerable research has examined human mate preferences across cultures, finding universal sex differences in preferences for attractiveness and resources as well as sources of systematic cultural variation. Two competing perspectives—an evolutionary psychological perspective and a biosocial role perspective—offer alternative explanations for the...
Chronic smokers often claim that smoking improves their cognitive abilities, such as concentration. However, scientific evidence to support this claim is scarce. Previous studies gave inconclusive results, and some of them had significant methodological flaws. Therefore, the aim of this study was to test whether smoking a single cigarette affects p...
Although studies consistently show gender differences in emotional vs. sexual jealousy, a substantial part of variance in jealousy is left unexplained. Here, we present two studies with aim to explore other correlates of jealousy, aside from gender. In the first online study ( n = 2970), we found that participants who reported being more upset by t...
Humans express a wide array of ideal mate preferences. Around the world, people desire romantic partners who are intelligent, healthy, kind, physically attractive, wealthy, and more. In order for these ideal preferences to guide the choice of actual romantic partners, human mating psychology must possess a means to integrate information across thes...
One of the issues within the framework of Darwinian medicine is why individuals develop the specific disease they do. Ethologists have long known that within any given population, there are organisms with the tendency towards higher (Hawks) or lower (Doves) aggressiveness, and since the physiological responses to stressful events are different in H...
Mate choice lies close to differential reproduction, the engine of evolution. Patterns of mate choice consequently have power to direct the course of evolution. Here we provide evidence suggesting one pattern of human mate choice—the tendency for mates to be similar in overall desirability—caused the evolution of a structure of correlations that we...
The phenomenon of self-deception has attracted the attention of philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, and evolutionary biologists. Different theoretical and methodological approaches notwithstanding, their findings share 1 common notion: self-deception has some adaptive properties. Here we present the results of the 2 studies, with the mutu...
In classic economic literature, decisions based on unrecoverable past investments instead of future gains are considered fallacies. They are known as the sunk-cost fallacy in humans and Concorde fallacy in other animals. Here, we argue that the aforementioned fallacies may in fact reflect adaptive heuristics, as well as that the evolutionary novelt...
Olfaction plays an important role in human social communication, including multiple domains in which people often rely on their sense of smell in the social context. The importance of the sense of smell and its role can however vary inter-individually and culturally. Despite the growing body of literature on differences in olfactory performance or...
[This corrects the article on p. 1199 in vol. 8, PMID: 28785230.].
Forms of committed relationships, including formal marriage arrangements between men and women, exist in almost every culture (Bell, 1997). Yet, similarly to many other psychological constructs (Henrich et al., 2010), marital satisfaction and its correlates have been investigated almost exclusively in Western countries (eg, Bradbury et al., 2000)....
Human spatial behavior has been the focus of hundreds of previous research studies. However, the conclusions and generalizability of previous studies on interpersonal distance preferences were limited by some important methodological and sampling issues. The objective of the present study was to compare preferred interpersonal distances across the...
Due to an oversight, the name of the author "Ahmad M. Alghraibeh" was incorrectly spelled as "Ahmad M. Aghraibeh." The correct version is shown above. The authors apologize for this oversight. This error does not affect the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated. Conflict of Interest Statement The au...
Objective: Theories about how couples help each other to cope with stress, such as the systemic transactional model of dyadic coping, suggest that the cultural context in which couples live influences how their coping behavior affects their relationship satisfaction. In contrast to the theoretical assumptions, a recent meta-analysis provides eviden...
It has been proposed that mate value influences both the mate selection process and the
quality of a romantic relationship once it has been formed. The aim of this study was to test
the relations among perceived own and partner’s mate value and relationship satisfaction.
As a relationship is a dynamic process, in which assessments made by 1 member...
Previous research has shown that both shift work and sleep deprivation have an adverse influence on various aspects of human cognitive performance. The aim of this study was to explore changes in cognitive functioning and subjective sleepiness of anesthesiology residents after a 24-hour shift. Twenty-six anesthesiology residents completed a set of p...
It has been suggested that the cross-cultural universality of pair-bonding reflects its adaptive function. Along with this line of reasoning, we hypothesised that partners’ perceptions of the relationship quality should also be determined by a cross-culturally universal mechanism of cost- benefit analysis. Therefore, the aim of this study was to co...
The leg-to-body ratio (LBR) is a morphological index that has been shown to influence a
person’s attractiveness. In our research, 3,103 participants from 27 nations rated the physical
attractiveness of seven male and seven female silhouettes varying in LBR. We found that male and
female silhouettes with short and excessively long legs were perceive...
Humans constantly have to detect covariations among many events, especially the ones in their social surrounding. Imperfections of this process led some authors to argue that an “intuitive scientist” is not capable of precise assessment of covariations. Here we argue that the tasks used in previous studies contained information that could not have...
Numerous investigators reported results which support the evolutionary theory of sex differences in jealousy. In this study we extend the cross cultural evaluation of jealousy to a comparison between U.S. and Croatian populations. Two alternative forced choice methods were used to assess how upset males and females were in the sexual or emotional i...
Subclinical neurocognitive deficit after carotid endarterectomy (CEA) has been reported in 25% of patients. The influence of the type of anesthesia and shunting on early postoperative neurocognitive function remains unclear. Therefore, we analyzed the cognitive function after CEA using a battery of psychometric tests before surgery and on the first...
Mnogobrojna pitanja koja su postavili istraživači evolucije govora još i danas ostaju neodgovorena. Budući da potpuno razumijevanje ovog područja nije moguće bez interdisciplinarnog i komparativnog pristupa, ovaj rad donosi kratki pregled istraživanja koja se bave anatomskim, neuralnim i genetskim preduvjetima za evoluciju govora. Pritom se poseban...
Sensation Seeking and Spatial Ability in Athletes: an Evolutionary Account
The aim of this study was threefold: (a) to examine sex differences in sensation seeking and spatial abilities in a sample of athlete students, (b) to explore whether measures of sensation seeking and spatial ability can be used to distinguish between athletes engaging in sp...
Darwinian medicine postulates a concept of "allostatic overload" as a trigger for certain types of diseases. It also postulates two behavioural strategies, doves and hawks, which differ in the immune system responses to allostatic load. The Darwinian medicine framework postulates that hawks should have greater incidence of autoimmune and inflammato...
Ima li istine u tome da se muškarci bolje snalaze u prostoru, a žene u konverzaciji? Koji je spol ljubomorniji? A koji agresivniji? Što žele žene, a što žele muškarci? Zašto žene "padaju" na skupe automobile, a muškarci na plavuše? I, ima li sve to skupa veze s razlikama u građi muškog i ženskog mozga, ili je za sve kriv odgoj? U poglavlju se raspr...
The aim of this study was to compare the patterns of EEG activation during solving various types of sex-biased tasks in different phases of menstrual cycle, and to determine whether the sex differences in these patterns are smaller when the comparison between men and women is made in women's menstrual phase of the cycle (lower levels of estrogen an...
