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Cassidy Shaw

Cassidy completed her undergraduate studies at Macquarie University and is now in her third year of her clinical psychology PhD at ANU. Cassidy is currently supervised by Dr Kristen Murray, A/Prof Elizabeth Rieger, Dr Conal Monoghan and Prof Bruce Christensen. Cassidy recently presented part of her PhD research at the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Eating Disorders Conference in Sydney. The last 30 years have witnessed a dramatic increase in the prevalence and severity of male body image disturbance, particularly muscularity concerns. However, in this time, consensus has not been reached on the features and classification of Muscle Dysmorphia, a disorder characterised by these concerns, with current diagnostic criteria defining it as a preoccupation with perceived insufficient muscularity and leanness. This was the first study that sought to build a clearer clinical picture of Muscle Dysmorphia by establishing its latent subconstructs using Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (EFA, CFA) and Item Response Theory. A sample of 511 males aged 18 to 45 years were recruited from the community and MTurk to complete an online survey assessing key features of the disorder, including muscularity-oriented diet, supplement use, obligatory exercise, and drive for both increased size and leanness.

Liz Miller

Liz is a final year research PhD candidate supervised by Dr Amy Dawel. She completed her undergraduate psychology degree and Honours here at ANU. Her work focuses on how people respond to computer-generated (CG) faces relative to human ones. Liz recently attended EPC in Brisbane, where she presented on the major work of PhD, which is a systematic review and meta-analysis comparing responses to CG versus human faces. This review uncovered several ways that responses to CG faces differ from human ones. However, this is for CG faces that we know are not human – but what happens when we can’t tell the difference between CG and human faces? Liz is going to present the plan for the final empirical experiments of her PhD, which use hyper-realistic CG faces.

Stephanie Gotsis

Stephanie is a final year PhD (psychology) candidate supervised by Prof Bruce Christensen. She completed her undergraduate degree (Sci/Psych) in Melbourne, honours (psychology) in Queensland, Masters in Neuroscience (JCSMR), before starting her PhD here at the Research School of Psychology in 2017. Stephanie's work has been recognised by the wider Psychology and Neuroscience communities at conferences. Most recently, she has presented her work at the Association for Psychological Science conference (2021) receiving a 'Distinguished contribution' award, and the Australasian Brain and Psychological Sciences conference (2022) where she was awarded one of the five 'best presentations' of the conference.