William Michael Brown
- Media Contact
- SPN Mentor
William Brown founded the Centre for Culture and Evolutionary Psychology at Brunel University in 2006. In 2009 he moved to Queen Mary University of London and the University of East London. In August 2011 Dr Brown joined the University of Bedfordshire. Dr Brown's research interests include exercise epigenetics, the evolution of cooperation, evolutionary maintenance of cheater strategies (e.g., psychopathy), developmental instability, intragenomic conflict and genomic imprinting. He also has research and teaching expertise in developmental processes and health psychological outcomes. The latter is being explored in part using epigenetic methodologies (e.g., DNA methylation analyses and 3D scanning of health-associated epigenetic phenotypes) in the context of exercise and physical activity. Lately, Dr Brown has been developing structural equation models to investigate evolutionary psychological hypotheses regarding reputation, ecological constraints and weapon tolerance.
Past Awards: British Academy Grant; European Office of Aerospace Research and Development Grant; Heinz Wolff Fellowship; NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship; Killam Scholar
Primary Interests:
- Aggression, Conflict, Peace
- Communication, Language
- Culture and Ethnicity
- Emotion, Mood, Affect
- Evolution and Genetics
- Health Psychology
- Helping, Prosocial Behavior
- Neuroscience, Psychophysiology
- Nonverbal Behavior
- Person Perception
- Research Methods, Assessment
- Social Cognition
Journal Articles:
- Brown, W.M. (2015). Exercise-associated DNA methylation change in skeletal muscle and the importance of imprinted genes: A bioinformatics meta-analysis. British Journal of Sports Medicine
- Brown, W. M. (2011). The parental antagonism theory of language evolution: Preliminary evidence for the proposal. Human Biology, 83 (2), 213-245.
- Brown, W. M. (2001). Genomic imprinting and the cognitive architecture mediating human culture. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 1, 251-258.
- Brown, W. M. (2001). Natural selection of mammalian brain components. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 16, 471-473.
- Brown, W. M., & Consedine, N. S. (2004). Just how happy is the happy puppet? An emotion signaling and kinship theory perspective on the behavioral phenotype of children with Angelman syndrome. Medical Hypotheses, 63, 377-385.
- Brown, W. M., Consedine, N. S., & Magai, C. (2006). Time spent in the United States and breast cancer screening behaviors among ethnically diverse immigrant women: Evidence for acculturation? Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, 8, 347-358.
- Brown, W. M., Consedine, N. S., & Magai, C. (2005). Altruism relates to health in an ethnically diverse sample of older adults. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 60B, 143-152.
- Brown, W.M. & Foxley-Webb, E. (2019). Novel epigenetic, quantitative and qualitative insights on the socialness of autism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 42, e84 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X18002285
- Brown, W.M., Hazarty, S. & Palasinski, M. (2019). Examining the dark tetrad and its links to cyberbullying. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 22 (8) Epub Ahead of Print http://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2019.0172
- Brown, W. M., & Moore, C. (2003). Fluctuating asymmetry and romantic jealousy. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24, 113-117.
- Brown, W. M., & Moore, C. (2000). Is prospective altruist-detection an evolved solution to the adaptive problem of subtle cheating in cooperative ventures? Supportive evidence using the Wason selection task. Evolution and Human Behavior, 21, 25-37.
- Brown, W. M., Palameta, B., & Moore, C. (2003). Are there nonverbal cues to commitment? An exploratory study using the zero-acquaintance video presentation paradigm. Evolutionary Psychology: An International Journal of Evolutionary Approaches to Psychology and Behavior, 1, 42-69.
- Brown, W. M., Price, M. E., Kang, J., Pound, N., Zhao, Y., & Yu, H. (2008). Fluctuating asymmetry and preferences for sex-typical bodily characteristics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(35), 12938-12943.
- Brown, W. M., & Usacka, A. (2019). The face of early cognitive decline? Shape and asymmetry predict choice reaction time independent of age, diet or exercise. Symmetry, 11(11), 1364. doi: 10.3390/sym11111364
- Chalk, T.E.W. & Brown, W.M. (2014). Exercise epigenetics and the fetal origins of disease. Epigenomics, 6(5),469-472.
- Consedine, N. S., Magai, C., Horton, D., & Brown, W. M. (2012). The affective paradox: An emotion regulatory account of ethnic differences in self-reported anger. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 43(5) 723-741.
- Palasinski, M., Brown, W.M., Shortland, N., Riggs, D., Chen, M., & Bowman-Grieve, L. (2019). Masculinity, injury and death – implications for anti-knife-carrying messages. Journal of Interpersonal Violence.
- Pound, N., Penton-Voak, I.S., & Brown, W.M. (2007). Facial symmetry is positively associated with self-reported extraversion. Personality and Individual Differences, 43 (6), 1572-1582.
Other Publications:
- Brown, W.M. (2012). Symmetry and evolution: A genomic antagonism approach. In Filomena de Sousa and Gonzalo Munévar (Editors) Sex, Reproduction and Darwinism. Pickering & Chatto Publishers: London.
- Brown, W. M. (2008). Sociogenomics for the cognitive adaptationist. In C. Crawford & D. Krebs (Eds.), Foundations of evolutionary psychology (pp. 171-182). Psychology Press/Lawrence Erlbaum.
- Brown, W.M., & Moore, C. (2002). Smile asymmetries and reputation as reliable indicator of likelihood to cooperate: An evolutionary analysis. In S.P. Shohov (Ed.) Advances in Psychology Research, 11, 59-78. New York: Nova Science Publishers.
- Brown, W.M. (2020). Genomic imprinting is critical for understanding the development and adaptive design of psychological mechanisms in humans and other animals. Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour. Edited by Workman, L., Reader, W. & Barkow, J. H. ISBN: 9781316642825
- Brown, W.M. (2002). Development: The missing link between exaptationist and adaptationist accounts of organismal design. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, 509-510.
- Brown, W. M. & Olding, R. J. (2017). Epigenetic-based hormesis and age-dependent altruism: Additions to the behavioural constellation of deprivation. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40.
- Palameta, B., & Brown, W.M. (1999). Human cooperation is more than by-product mutualism. Animal Behaviour, 57 (2), F1-F3
Courses Taught:
- Evolutionary Psychology
- Foundations to Psychology
- Genomic Imprinting
- Infant and Child Development Psychology
- Lifespan Human Development for Nursing Students
- Motivation and Emotion
- Motor Performance and Learning
- Principles of Biology
- Research Methods
- Statistics for the Behavioural Sciences
William Michael Brown
School of Psychology
Faculty of Creative Arts, Technologies & Science
University of Bedfordshire
Luton LU1 3JU
United Kingdom