Achim Schützwohl
Lecturer in Psychology
Psychology
Brunel University
Uxbridge, UB8 3PH
United Kingdom
Biography
Qualifications
- Habilitation (Bielefeld)
- PhD Psychology (Bielefeld)
- Diploma in Psychology (Bielefeld)
Personal Biography
Not good enough to make it as a professional football player, too short sighted to become a pilot with Lufthansa and living as a winemaker in the south of France not yet in my mind, I had the gut feeling that psychology might be a worthwhile alternative. Early on I developed an interest in the psychology of the emotions, a topic that dominates my research until today. Most of my academic life I spent at the University Bielefeld, interspersed with two excursions to the Universities in Giessen and Osnabrueck. I joined Brunel in 2007.Research
Research Overview
In my research I focus on two rather unequal emotions, surprise and jealousy. Despite their obvious differences - the one is very short-lived, can be affectively neutral and has a characteristic facial expression, the other is very long-lived, violent and lacks a characteristic facial expressions - both are fundamental for our survival and reproduction. Only recently I extended my interest to face perception, specifically in men’s capacity to detect a woman’s proneness to sexual infidelity from facial cues.
Member, Centre for Culture and Evolutionary Psychology
Member, Centre for Cognition and Neuroimaging (CCNI)
Current Projects
Morbid jealousy
January 2012 -
Achim Schuetzwohl (PI)
Detecting infidelity from facial cues
September 2010 –
Achim Schuetzwohl (PI)
Recently Completed Projects
Attachment style and jealousy
September 2009 – May 2012
Achim Schuetzwohl (PI)
Facial expression of surprise
September 2007 – May 2012
Achim Schuetzwohl (PI)
Teaching
Undergraduate Programmes
Module convenor
- Foundations in Psychology I: Learning and social psychology
Module contributor
- Evolutionary Psychology
Postgraduate Programmes
Module contributor
- Evolutionary Biology and Research Methods
- Evolutionary Psychology
Administration
- Chair of the Dept Ethics Committee
External Activity
- Member of the Association for Psychological Science
- Associate Editor Evolutionary Psychology
Publications
Publications
Journal Papers
(2012) Schützwohl, A. and Reisenzein, R., Facial expressions in response to a highly surprising event exceeding the field of vision: A test of Darwin's theory of surprise, Evolution and Human Behavior 33 (6) : 657- 664
(2011) Schutzwohl, A., Jealousy in Love Relationships, Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung 24 (2) : 134- 154
(2011) Schützwohl, A., Morjaria, S. and Alvis, S., Spatial distance regulates sex-specific feelings to suspected sexual and emotional infidelity, Evolutionary Psychology 9 (3) : 417- 429
(2009) Schutzwohl, A., Fuchs, A., McKibbin, WF. and Shackelford, TK., How willing are you to accept sexual requests from slightly unattractive to exceptionally attractive imagined requestors?, Human Nature 20 (3) : 282- 293 Download publication
(2008) Schützwohl, A., Relief over the disconfirmation of the prospect of sexual and emotional infidelity, Personality and Individual Differences 44 (3) : 668- 678
(2008) Schützwohl, A., The crux of cognitive load: constraining deliberate and effortful decision processes in romantic jealousy, Evolution and Human Behavior 29 (2) : 127- 132
(2008) Schützwohl, A., The disengagement of attentive resources from task-irrelevant cues to sexual and emotional infidelity, Personality and Individual Differences 44 (3) : 633- 644
(2008) Schützwohl, A., The intentional object of romantic jealousy, Evolution and Human Behavior 29 (2) : 92- 99
(2007) Schützwohl, A., Decision strategies in continuous ratings of jealousy feelings elicited by sexual and emotional infidelity, Evolutionary Psychology 5
(2006) Schutzwohl, A., Judging female figures: A new methodological approach to male attractiveness judgments of female waist-to-hip ratio, Biological Psychology 71 (2) : 223- 229
(2006) Schutzwohl, A., Sex differences in jealousy: Information search and cognitive preoccupation, Personality and Individual Differences 40 (2) : 285- 292
(2005) Schutzwohl, A. and Borgstedt, K., The processing of affectively valenced stimuli: The role of surprise, Cognition & Emotion 19 (4) : 583- 600
(2005) Schutzwohl, A., Sex differences in jealousy: The processing of cues to infidelity, Evolution and Human Behavior 26 (3) : 288- 299
(2004) Schutzwohl, A. and Koch, S., Sex differences in jealousy: The recall of cues to sexual and emotional infidelity in personally more and less threatening context conditions, Evolution and Human Behavior 25 (4) : 249- 257
(2001) Schützwohl, A. and Krefting, E., Structure and intensity of surprise, Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie 48 (1) : 41- 56
(2001) Schutzwohl, A. and Krefting, E., The structure of surprise intensity, Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie 48 (1) : 41- 56
(1999) Schützwohl, A. and Reisenzein, R., Children's and adults' reactions to a schema-discrepant event: A developmental analysis of surprise, International Journal of Behavioral Development 23 (1) : 37- 62
(1998) Schützwohl, A., Surprise and schema strength, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 24 (5) : 1182- 1199 Download publication
(1998) Horstmann, G. and Schützwohl, A., Effect of associative strength of schema elements on intensity of startle reaction, Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie 45 (3) : 203- 217
(1998) Horstmann, G. and Schutzwohl, A., Strength of interconnections between schema elements and intensity of the emotion of surprise, Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie 45 (3) : 203- 217
(1997) Meyer, WU., Reisenzein, R. and Schu tzwohl, A., Toward a process analysis of emotions: The case of surprise, Motivation and Emotion 21 (3) : 251- 274
(1995) Reisenzein, R., Meyer, W-U. and Schützwohl, A., James and the physical basis of emotion: A comment on Ellsworth, Psychological Review 102 (4) : 757- 761
(1994) Niepel, M., Rudolph, U., Schützwohl, A. and Meyer, WU., Temporal characteristics of the surprise reaction induced by schema-discrepant visual and auditory events, Cognition and Emotion 8 (5) : 433- 452
(1991) Meyer, WU., Niepel, M., Rudolph, U. and Schützwohl, A., An experimental-analysis of surprise, Cognition and Emotion 5 (4) : 295- 311
(1991) Schützwohl, A., Determinants of pride and shame - action outcome, expected consequence and attribution, Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie 38 (1) : 76- 93
Book Chapters
(2009) Schützwohl, A., Überraschung [Surprise]. In: Brandstätter, V. and Otto, JH. eds. Handbuch der Allgemeinen Psychologie - Motivation und Emotion [Handbook General Psychology: Motivation and Emotion]. Goettingen : Hogrefe-Verlag 577- 584
