Professor Fiona Kate Barlow
Professor Fiona Kate Barlow
Australia
“Life is dramatically more boring, less creative, and less productive without diversity. Through diverse opinions, bodies, and people we are exposed to a wealth of opportunity for industry, support, and growth.”
Dr Fiona Kate Barlow is a Professor of Social Psychology at The University of Queensland, Australia. With a PhD in Social Psychology, she is a leading international expert in the field of prejudice and discrimination, with a particular focus on how injustice and representation can affect the mental health and well-being of minority groups.
Fiona has gained recognition for her work into the body image and mental health experiences of ‘invisible’ communities, including mid-life women, older adults and sexual minorities. She is recognised by the Australian Research Council as a Future Fellow, and regularly works with governments, media and nonprofits to create more equitable societies.
Why study psychology?
I find humans endlessly fascinating. We are, as a species, incredibly clever, dilligent and hardworking, while also being almost relentlessly illogical. It is that combination of the potential for brilliance and tendency towards being ridiculous that made me want to learn more about, well, being human.
After I graduated high school I took a gap year to go study in the US. There I took my first college class in psychology. At the time I had a very strong idea of who I was going to be as a grown-up – Ally MacBeal! The late 90s legal dramedy had deeply impacted me as a girl, but still, it was no match for psychology. As I started to learn about the things that make people tick, the ways that we communicate or fail to communicate with each other, and the importance of addressing psychological health and wellbeing, I became committed to studying psychology.
For me, however, it was always with an eye to applying psychology to broad social problems. I completed my undergraduate degree majoring in both Psychology and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. In the latter major I learned about how historical and present day injustice and discrimination affect Indigenous peoples in Australia and across the world. In the former major I learned about how we can study discrimination and prejudice quantitatively, to evaluate intuitions we all have about what causes prejudice, and how we might address it.
Twenty years later I have more expertise but remain as passionate about psychology as I ever was, and champing at the bit to tackle the next big project.
Why does an evidence base matter?
We all have intuitions about the world. Sometimes these intuitions are really strong – things we think feel unassailable. One great example is found in a recent study I conducted with one of my past PhD students. In this study we asked heterosexual women about the extent to which their partner was attracted to them. Unfortunately, a large number of women told us that their partner wasn’t attracted to them. These same women reported being generally unhappy in their relationships. If we were just to look at this evidence, and stop there we might conclude that to make these women happy we need to intervene with the women’s partners, or even encourage the women to leave their partners.
But we didn’t stop there. We also gathered data from women’s partners and asked them “how attracted are you to your partner?”. It’s here that something very interesting happened. We discovered that whether women reported that their partner was attracted to them or not actually had almost nothing to do with whether their partner actually was attracted to them! Instead, it was women who were struggling with body image issues and felt unattractive that assumed that their partners felt the same way. These assumptions (and not any lack of attraction from partners) went on to predict women’s unhappiness in their relationships, and even their partner’s unhappiness. From getting the full evidence we learned that women who are dissatisfied with their bodies didn’t have partners who were unattracted to them, but they assumed that they did. Our results hinted that this assumption might go on to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, ruining relationships. From our research we learned that if we want to improve these women’s relationship happiness the point of intervention isn’t with their partners, or even the relationship. Instead, it is body image concerns that need to be tackled.
“What does this have to do with business?” you might be thinking? The answer is that we, like participants in our study, will also have intuitions about what to do when a team or project feels broken, or how we might solve a company wide problem, for example. And just like the participants in our study, our intuitions will often be wrong. It is through rigorous assessment and evaluation of the evidence that we can start doing real good and using our resources to efficaciously deal with problems.
What area do you prefer to work in?
One of my big passions is the area of communication – almost everything that we do is influenced by the extent to which we can clearly, transparently, and empathetically communicate with each other. This means that whether consulting with schools or businesses, or managing a busy team of academics at university, I am often tacking the same problems – those of communication. How do we as individuals and companies communicate our values? Or care for staff? Our appreciation of customers? Our core social endeavors? Answering these questions is exciting for me across the spectrum of application. Developing and evaluating an evidence base and coming up with clear and actionable recommendations is a key and exciting part of the job!
The Small Print
Education
Doctor of Philosophy (Social Psychology), The University of Queensland (2005-2009)
Bachelor of Psychology Honours (First Class), The University of Queensland (2004)
Current Appointments
Professor in Social Psychology, The School of Psychology, The University of Queensland
Past Competitive Research Fellowships
Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2016-2020)
Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award (2012-2014)
Publications
When I’m not working, you’ll find me…
Trying to learn Malayalam, my husband’s family language. This beautiful language at present has other ideas.
Cooking things at incredibly high heat, in a way not recommended in any original recipe.
Reading fiction, especially that which is exciting or mysterious.
Escaping into pockets of bushland in my city, to go on lovely walks.
Connect with me
Find out more about Fiona and their work.
Work with us
For information about working with Fiona on your project please get in touch.