Usman Afzali

University of Canterbury | UC · Department of Psychology

The Christchurch mosque attacks in 2019, committed by a radical right-wing extremist, resulted in the tragic loss of 51 lives. Following these events, there was a noticable rise in societal acceptance of Muslim minorities. Comparable transient reactions have been observed elsewhere. However, the critical questions remain: can these effects endure?...

Research on the accuracy of Brain Fingerprinting has produced mixed outcomes: some report 99.9% and others report lower. Furthermore, no studies have measured the susceptibility of Brain Fingerprinting to countermeasures. In Experiment‐1, we report the accurate classification of 15 of the 16 subjects, tested on their own real‐life autobiographical...

The long-term psychological effects of terrorist attacks on social attitudes are unknown and challenging to estimate. The 2019 Christchurch New Zealand mosque attacks initially increased the public acceptance of Muslims, the targeted minority. However, whether this minority-acceptance effect is durable, or instead follows a transitory “rallying to...

Brain Fingerprinting (BFP) is an electroencephalogram-based system used to detect knowledge, or absence of knowledge of a real-life incident (e.g., a crime) in a person's memory. With the help of BFP, a potential crime suspect can be classified as possessing crime-related information (Information-Present), not possessing crime-related information (...

The Christchurch mosque shootings on March 15th, 2019 was the deadliest incident of mass violence in New Zealand for over a century. The present study investigated the psychological impact of these terrorist attacks targeting a specific minority community on the psychological functioning of the wider New Zealand population by examining changes in t...

This article examines the impact of the 15th March 2019 far-right terrorist attack against Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand on public opinion toward Muslims. It also examines whether the impact of the attack varies for individuals across the political spectrum. We make use of data from the 2019 New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (N = 47,951...

Natural (e.g., earthquake, flood, wildfires) and human-made (e.g., terrorism, civil strife) disasters are inevitable, can cause extensive disruption, and produce chronic and disabling psychological injuries leading to formal diagnoses (e.g., post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]). Following natural disasters of earthquake (Christchurch, Aotearoa/Ne...

Financial stress predicts negative academic, social, and psychological outcomes in a tertiary student's life. To investigate whether free first-year education could mitigate financial stress in New Zealand tertiary education students, 270 psychology students from the University of Canterbury completed scales measuring financial stress, perceived so...

Following the March 15th Christchurch terrorist attack, members of our research team have been repeatedly asked to comment or provide summary statistics from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (NZAVS) on prejudice toward Muslims. As the curators of the NZAVS, we think that these findings should be in the public domain and accessible to as w...

In the aftermath of the horrific terrorist attack against Muslims in Christchurch, it is important to examine what psychological factors predict positive attitudes toward Muslims and acceptance of diversity, more broadly. The present work examines how beliefs about national identity predict attitudes toward Muslims and support for diversity in New...