Dr Kate McCulloch
Lecturer in Psychology
- Phone
- +44 (0)1473 338339
- k.mcculloch2@uos.ac.uk
- School/Directorate
- School of Social Sciences and Humanities
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Kate is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Suffolk, having joined the team in September 2019. She initially studied BA English at the University of Leicester before completing the Psychology Conversion MSc at the University of Essex. After working as an Assistant Clinical Psychologist in a community mental health team, Kate returned to the University of Essex to complete her PhD, working with Dr Rick O’Gorman. Her expertise lies primarily in Social and Biological Psychology, with a focus on Social Evolutionary Psychology and Psychophysiology.
PhD Psychology (University of Essex, 2020) – Thesis: Distinguishing moral disgust and anger using pupillometry and responses to economic behaviours.
MSc Psychology Conversion (University of Essex, 2014)
BA (Hons) English (University of Leicester, 2013)
Kate currently lectures on the following modules: Quantitative Design and Analysis (Level 5), Evolutionary Psychology (Level 5), Psychology in Education (Level 5), Biological and Cognitive Psychology (Level 5), and Foundations in Biological and Cognitive Psychology (Level 4). She is the module leader for Biological and Cognitive Psychology and Evolutionary Psychology. She supervises final year and masters dissertation students.
Kate’s research uses a biological and evolutionary approach to understanding morality and moral emotions. Her research uses self-report, economic games, and pupillometry to investigate emotional and social responses to immorality. Her most recent works investigate the utility of pupil diameter as a measure of autonomic arousal and how first impressions impact how likely someone is seen to commit certain moral violations.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3734-8943
Publications
McCulloch, K., Dalmaijer, E., Rieger, G., & O’Gorman, R. (2025). Differences in pupil size during self-reported experiences of disgust, sadness, fear, anger, and happiness. Biological Psychology, 198.
Finch, J. & McCulloch, K., (2025). An Evaluation of the Services Offered by Restitute: Well-being, Confident Parenting & Caring, and Physical Health. University of Suffolk.
McCulloch, K., Steele, Y., & Gheorghiu, A. I. (2024). The relationship between face-based first impressions and perceptions of purity and compared to other moral violations. Behavioral Sciences, 14(12), 1205.
McCulloch, K. & O’Gorman R. (2019) Pathogen Risk. In: Shackelford T., Weekes-Shackelford V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham
Presentations
McCulloch, K. & O’Gorman, R. (2019, May). Disgust, Anger, and Contempt in Response to Harm and Incompetence. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Human Behaviour and Evolution Society, Boston.
O’Gorman, R., Rieger, G., McCulloch, K., & Whitaker, L. (2019, May). The Westermarck Effect: Measuring Incest Aversion by Pupil Dilation. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Human Behaviour and Evolution Society, Boston.
McCulloch, K., O’Gorman, R., Knutsen, D., & Rieger, G. (2018, July). Pupil Dilation as a Measure of Disgust. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Human Behaviour and Evolution Society, Amsterdam.
McCulloch, K., O’Gorman, R., Knutsen, D., & Rieger, G. (2018, April). Pupil Dilation as a Measure of Disgust. Poster session presented at the Annual Conference of the European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association, Pécs.