I teach mainly in social psychology and I am the course leader for the following courses; Social psychology (7,5 HECs, Psychology II), Applied social psychology (7,5 HECs, the general master's programme in psychology) and Personality psychology (7,5 HECs, the master's programme in Personnel, work, and organization).

I also give lectures in social psychology for instance on social identity and self-presentation at various courses and programmes as well as teach in qualitative methods specifically interview methodology at various courses. I also supervise theses at the bachelor and master's level and also at the psychologist programme.

All of my research interests are tied together by issues that concern social psychology. In 2006, I defended my PhD thesis on attribution among shy adults and also conducted research about perceived risks related to different transport modes.

Currently, I have several areas of interest that foremost lie in the cross roads between forensic psychology, criminal behavior and substance use.

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Affective Interpersonal Touch in Close Relationships

  2021. Agnieszka Sorokowska (et al.). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 47 (12), 1705-1721

  Article

  Interpersonal touch behavior differs across cultures, yet no study to date has systematically tested for cultural variation in affective touch, nor examined the factors that might account for this variability. Here, over 14,000 individuals from 45 countries were asked whether they embraced, stroked, kissed, or hugged their partner, friends, and youngest child during the week preceding the study. We then examined a range of hypothesized individual-level factors (sex, age, parasitic history, conservatism, religiosity, and preferred interpersonal distance) and cultural-level factors (regional temperature, parasite stress, regional conservatism, collectivism, and religiosity) in predicting these affective-touching behaviors. Our results indicate that affective touch was most prevalent in relationships with partners and children, and its diversity was relatively higher in warmer, less conservative, and religious countries, and among younger, female, and liberal people. This research allows for a broad and integrated view of the bases of cross-cultural variability in affective touch.

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• Sex differences in human mate preferences vary across sex ratios

  2021. Kathryn V. Walter (et al.). Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences 288 (1955)

  Article

  A wide range of literature connects sex ratio and mating behaviours in non-human animals. However, research examining sex ratio and human mating is limited in scope. Prior work has examined the relationship between sex ratio and desire for short-term, uncommitted mating as well as outcomes such as marriage and divorce rates. Less empirical attention has been directed towards the relationship between sex ratio and mate preferences, despite the importance of mate preferences in the human mating literature. To address this gap, we examined sex ratio's relationship to the variation in preferences for attractiveness, resources, kindness, intelligence and health in a long-term mate across 45 countries (n = 14 487). We predicted that mate preferences would vary according to relative power of choice on the mating market, with increased power derived from having relatively few competitors and numerous potential mates. We found that each sex tended to report more demanding preferences for attractiveness and resources where the opposite sex was abundant, compared to where the opposite sex was scarce. This pattern dovetails with those found for mating strategies in humans and mate preferences across species, highlighting the importance of sex ratio for understanding variation in human mate preferences.

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• Social worker motivations and organisational prerequisites for care of children who commit crimes – the best interests of the child or the protection of society?

  2021. Michael Tärnfalk, Charlotte Alm. European Journal of Social Work 24 (1), 21-33

  Article

  The Swedish juvenile justice system’s placing of children aged 15–17 under one roof in Secure Youth Care institutions presents a dilemma for social work officers attempting to resolve delinquency cases in the best interests of the child. Retrospective interviews were conducted in 2015 and mainly in Stockholm County with six professional social services officers (SSOs). The data were processed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), social science theory, relevant law, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and material from the National Board of Health and Welfare. Main results show that SSOs were concerned about the risk of faulty assessments, the inadequacy of methods and insufficient attention being paid to relevant scientific knowledge. All in all, the task of protecting the child vis-à-vis protecting society becomes a major challenge in an institution where there is no clear line of demarcation between punishment and care and rehabilitation efforts. Sweden’s ambition to incorporate the CRC into Swedish law requires more focused education of personnel and national guidelines concerning the best interests of the child, as well as the allocation of more adequate resources to allow for more time with each client.

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• Universality of the Triangular Theory of Love

  2021. Piotr Sorokowski (et al.). Journal of Sex Research 58 (1), 106-115

  Article

  The Triangular Theory of Love (measured with Sternberg's Triangular Love Scale - STLS) is a prominent theoretical concept in empirical research on love. To expand the culturally homogeneous body of previous psychometric research regarding the STLS, we conducted a large-scale cross-cultural study with the use of this scale. In total, we examined more than 11,000 respondents, but as a result of applied exclusion criteria, the final analyses were based on a sample of 7332 participants from 25 countries (from all inhabited continents). We tested configural invariance, metric invariance, and scalar invariance, all of which confirmed the cultural universality of the theoretical construct of love analyzed in our study. We also observed that levels of love components differ depending on relationship duration, following the dynamics suggested in the Triangular Theory of Love. Supplementary files with all our data, including results on love intensity across different countries along with STLS versions adapted in a few dozen languages, will further enable more extensive research on the Triangular Theory of Love.

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• Reasons for Facebook Usage

  2020. Marta Kowal (et al.). Frontiers in Psychology 11

  Article

  Introduction: Seventy-nine percent of internet users use Facebook, and on average they access Facebook eight times a day (Greenwood et al., 2016). To put these numbers into perspective, according to Clement (2019), around 30% of the world's population uses this Online Social Network (OSN) site.

  Despite the constantly growing body of academic research on Facebook (Chou et al., 2009; Back et al., 2010; Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; McAndrew and Jeong, 2012; Wilson et al., 2012; Krasnova et al., 2017), there remains limited research regarding the motivation behind Facebook use across different cultures. Our main goal was to collect data from a large cross-cultural sample of Facebook users to examine the roles of sex, age, and, most importantly, cultural differences underlying Facebook use.

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• Sex Differences in Mate Preferences Across 45 Countries

  2020. Kathryn Walter (et al.). Psychological Science 31 (4), 408-423

  Article

  Considerable research has examined human mate preferences across cultures, finding universal sex differences in preferences for attractiveness and resources as well as sources of systematic cultural variation. Two competing perspectives-an evolutionary psychological perspective and a biosocial role perspective-offer alternative explanations for these findings. However, the original data on which each perspective relies are decades old, and the literature is fraught with conflicting methods, analyses, results, and conclusions. Using a new 45-country sample (N = 14,399), we attempted to replicate classic studies and test both the evolutionary and biosocial role perspectives. Support for universal sex differences in preferences remains robust: Men, more than women, prefer attractive, young mates, and women, more than men, prefer older mates with financial prospects. Cross-culturally, both sexes have mates closer to their own ages as gender equality increases. Beyond age of partner, neither pathogen prevalence nor gender equality robustly predicted sex differences or preferences across countries.

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• Contrasting Computational Models of Mate Preference Integration Across 45 Countries

  2019. Daniel Conroy-Beam (et al.). Scientific Reports 9

  Article

  Humans express a wide array of ideal mate preferences. Around the world, people desire romantic partners who are intelligent, healthy, kind, physically attractive, wealthy, and more. In order for these ideal preferences to guide the choice of actual romantic partners, human mating psychology must possess a means to integrate information across these many preference dimensions into summaries of the overall mate value of their potential mates. Here we explore the computational design of this mate preference integration process using a large sample of n = 14,487 people from 45 countries around the world. We combine this large cross-cultural sample with agent-based models to compare eight hypothesized models of human mating markets. Across cultures, people higher in mate value appear to experience greater power of choice on the mating market in that they set higher ideal standards, better fulfill their preferences in choice, and pair with higher mate value partners. Furthermore, we find that this cross-culturally universal pattern of mate choice is most consistent with a Euclidean model of mate preference integration.

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• Language and eyewitness suggestibility

  2019. Charlotte Alm, Nora Helmy Rehnberg, Torun Lindholm. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling

  Article

  During forensic interviews, eyewitnesses are to retrieve correct information from memory. Cognitive load should be high, leading to risks of giving in to suggestive questions and difficulties in memory retrieval generally. Testifying in a non-native vs. native language may require even more cognitive effort due to the need to inhibit the interference of the native language. Such witnesses may also be more motivated to appear credible because they often belong to ethnic outgroups relative to forensic professionals, risking more scepticism. In this study, Swedish participants (N = 51) reported their memory of a simulated crime event either in English (non-native language) or in Swedish (native language) and were tested for suggestibility and accuracy. Results showed that English-speaking witnesses yielded to more suggestive questions, perceived themselves as less credible but were equally accurate. Results suggest that testifying in a non-native language is taxing cognitive resources, in turn increasing suggestibility and suboptimal memory search.

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• Assortative mating and the evolution of desirability covariation

  2019. Daniel Conroy-Beam (et al.). Evolution and human behavior 40 (5), 479-491

  Article

  Mate choice lies dose to differential reproduction, the engine of evolution. Patterns of mate choice consequently have power to direct the course of evolution. Here we provide evidence suggesting one pattern of human mate choice-the tendency for mates to be similar in overall desirability-caused the evolution of a structure of correlations that we call the d factor. We use agent-based models to demonstrate that assortative mating causes the evolution of a positive manifold of desirability, d, such that an individual who is desirable as a mate along any one dimension tends to be desirable across all other dimensions. Further, we use a large cross-cultural sample with n = 14,478 from 45 countries around the world to show that this d-factor emerges in human samples, is a cross-cultural universal, and is patterned in a way consistent with an evolutionary history of assortative mating. Our results suggest that assortative mating can explain the evolution of a broad structure of human trait covariation.

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Show all publications by Charlotte Alm at Stockholm University