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Peter K. Jonason,
Ph.D.
pjonason@uwf.edu
Mobile: 860-450-6658
Fax: 850-857-6060
University of West Florida
Department of Psychology
Pensacola, FL 32514
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Area of study:
Experimental Social
Psychology
Emphasis: Adaptive Individual Differences, Conditional Mating Strategies,
Sex/Dating Research, & Personality Research
- Education:
- B.A., Political Science and Communication Sciences, 2000, UConn
- Advisor: Dr.
Ross Buck
M.A., Communication Sciences: Nonverbal Focus, Minor focus: Psychology,
2003, UConn
Advisor: Dr. Ross Buck
- Thesis: A cultivation analysis of physical attractiveness
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- Ph.D. Experimental Social Psychology, Minor focuses: Biological Anthroplolgy
and Statistics, 2009, NMSU
- Advisor: Dr. Laura Madson
- Dissertation: The unmeasured variable in mating psychology: Financial
Security
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- Research Interests:
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- Adaptive individual differences: Traditionally, personality
psychology has remained theoretically neutral, holding that personality
traits are merely descriptive adjectives. However, personality traits
have been repeatedly shown to relate to adaptive outcomes in both an evolutionary
and a coping/adjustment sense. Therefore, some have argued that personality
traits may be adaptive individual differences. We must be weary however,
that we do not take a hypothetical construct -- a personality trait --
to be real itself. What we call personality traits are more likely reflections
of underlying, evolved social strategies. These personality traits are,
to some degree, imperfect measures of underlying social strategies that
have promoted fitness in ancetral environments. My research in this area
focuses mainly on the Dark Triad (narcissism, psychopathy, & Machiavellianism).
I have demonstrated that the three can be treated as reflective of a single,
agentic social strategy. Using this social strategy approach, I have shown
that these people are not too altruistic or prosocial, particularly intersted
in short-term mating, often paying the costs of losing mates to their
short-term mating agenda, and these people live a life filled with risk.
It is also clear that it is men, not women, who really adopt this social
strategy. This social strategy appears to be orthogonal to a more prosocial
strategy. It is likely that individuals have at their disposal both prosocial
and antisocial social strategies. The use of each strategy is related
to both genetic factors and environmental triggers.
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- Conditional mating strategies: Mick Jagger may have said it best:
"you can't always get what you want." When individuals are confronted
with the reality of an inability to date the most intelligent or the most
attractive person they tend to make compromises in their mate preferences.
These compromises come with costs, such as if an individual decides to
lower the strength in their preference for physical attractiveness, they
are confronted with the fact that those they are dating are not as attractive
as they really want. However, little research addresses what strategies
individuals take to trade the costs and benefits of these compromises
in newly forming relationships. One strategy that I am currently studying,
I call "casting a wider net." Casting a wider net allows individuals
to increase the size of their mating pool while maintaining high standards.
It appears that women are generally more willing to adopt this strategy
than men. A similar behavior can be found in Antarctic fur seals and Chacma
baboons, and may be related to a larger biological concept known as natal
dispersion.
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- Relationships as negotiations: Ever wonder why all relationships
are different both when comparing your own and when comparing yours to
other people's relationships? It is my contention that each relationship
is unique because each relationship is the result of the negoations that
each couple goes through in defining the parameters of their relationship.
However, researchers have predominantly focused their across-relationship
analyses on one-night stands and monogamously married or dating dyads.
This gives the impression that these are (1) the only relationships available
to people and (2) that relationships are clearly defined. There are other
relationship types (e.g., "friends with benefits" and swingers)
that exist in the dating ecology that may yield reformulations of this
polarized perspective, a greater understanding of what really comprises
a relationship, and what individual differences are associated with certain
types of relationship choices. One could call these other relationships
"hybrids" because they have features of both long-term and short-term
relationship patterns in a more equal quantity than those relationship
types under typical investigation. While more descriptive work is needed,
these relatively untouched areas of sexual and romantic relationship research
are open for not only exploration but are likely to yield interesting
findings in dating dynamics, partner preferences, and the battle of the
sexes.
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- Additional Interests. Comparative Psychology, Primatology, Evolutionary
Biology, Human Evolution
Publications:
- In press
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- Jonason, P. K., Bryan, A., & Herrera, J. (in press). Trimming
the fat reveals a one factor structure for Hong’s Psychological
Reactance Scale. Individual Differences Research.
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- Jonason, P. K., Li N. P., & Teicher, E. A. (in press). Who is James
Bond?: The Dark Triad as an agentic social style. Individual Differences
Research.
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- Jonason, P. K., Li, N. P., & Buss, D. M. (in press). The Dark Triad
as a short-term mating strategy: Implications for mate poaching and mate
retention tactics. Personality and Individual Differences.
- 2009
-
- Jonason, P. K. (2009). The value of physical
attractiveness: Modeling biological and social variables. Journal
of Social Psychology, 149, 229-240.
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- Jonason, P. K., Cetrulo, J. F., Madrid, J. M.,
& Morrison, C. (2009). Gift-giving for courtship or mate-retention?:
Insights from animal models. Evolutionary Psychology, 7, 89-103.
- Jonason, P. K., & Fisher, T. D. (2009).
The power of prestige: Why young men report having more sex partners than
young women. Sex Roles, 60, 151-159.
- Jonason, P. K., Li, N. P., & Cason,
M. J. (2009). The "booty call": A compromise between men and
women’s ideal mating strategies. The Journal of Sex Research,
46, 1-11.
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- Jonason, P. K., & Marks, M. J. (2009).
Common vs. uncommon sexual acts: Evidence for the sexual double standard.
Sex Roles, 60, 357-365.
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- Jonason, P. K.. Li, N. P., Webster, G. W., &
Schmitt, D. P. (2009). The Dark Triad: Facilitating short-term mating
in men. European Journal of Personality, 23, 5-18.
New
scientist article ABC
News
- Jonason, P. K., Krcmar, M., & Sohn,
S., (2009). Male body image: The role of exposure, social comparison,
and body mass index in body satisfaction. Social Behavior and Personality,
37, 627-630.
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- Li, N. P., Griskevicius, V., Durante, K. M.,
Jonason, P. K., Pasisz, D. J., & Aumer, K. (2009). An evolutionary
perspective on humor: Sexual selection or interest indication? Personality
and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 923-936.
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- Webster, G. D., Jonason, P. K., & Schember,
T. O. (2009). Hot topics and popular papers in Evolutionary Psychology:
Analyses of title words and citation counts in Evolution and Human Behavior,
1979 – 2008. Evolutionary Psychology, 7, 348-362.
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- 2008
- Jonason, P. K., Webster, G. D., & Lindsey.
A. E. (2008). Solutions to the problem of diminished social interaction.
Evolutionary Psychology, 6, 637-651.
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- 2007
-
- Jonason,
P. K. (2007). A mediation hypothesis
to account for the sex difference in reported number of sexual partners:
An intrasexual competition approach. International Journal of Sexual
Health, 19, 41-49.
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- Jonason, P. K. (2007). Further tests of validity
for the one-dimensional scale of Hong’s Psychological Reactance
Scale. Psychological Reports, 101, 871-874.
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- Jonason, P. K. (2007). An evolutionary
perspective on sex differences in exercise behaviors and motivations.
Journal of Social Psychology, 147, 5-14.
- Jonason, P. K., Izzo, P. L., & Webster,
G. D. (2007). Helping others to find long-term and short-term mates: Tests
of inclusive fitness, reciprocal altruism, and parental investment theories.
Evolutionary Psychology, 5, 716-732.
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- 2006
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- Jonason, P. K. & Knowles, H. M. (2006).
A unidimensional measure of Hong's Psychological Reactance Scale. Psychological
Reports, 98, 569-579.
Invited resubmissions:
- Jonason, P. K., Cetrulo, J. F., & Ortiz, J. (invited resubmission).
Treating personality traits as reflections of social strategies. Journal
of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology.
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- Jonason, P. K., Teicher, E. A., Schmitt, D. P. (invited resubmission).
The TIPI’s validity confirmed: Associations with sociosexuality
and self-esteem. Individual Differences Research.
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- Jonason, P. K., & Webster, G. D. (invited resubmission). The Dirty
Dozen: A brief measure of the Dark Triad. Psychological Assessment.
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- Submitted for publication:
- Jonason, P. K. (under review). A time to cast away items, a time to
gather items together: A new, efficient, five-item measure of religiousness.
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- Jonason, P. K., Bryan, A., Teicher, E. A., & Marks, M. J. (under
review). Measuring the sexual double standard: Psychometric properties
and validity tests.
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- Courses Taught:
- Personality Psychology, Social
Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Interpersonal
Communication, Inferential Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, Research
Methods & Statistical Analysis, Introduction
to Psychology, Introduction
to Media, Public Speaking, Introduction
to Communication Sciences, Media
& Society, Persuasion & Debate
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