Role
Eithne Kavanagh is a Senior Lecturer and Research Fellow working on Prof. Bridget Waller's ERC-funded project (FACEDIFF). Her previous work focused on dominance behaviour and communication in nonhuman primates. Currently she is leading the human component of the FACEDIFF project, which aims to understand individual differences in facial expression in human and nonhuman primates, and how they relate to social networks
Eithne is a member of the Evolution and Social Interaction Research Group.
Research areas
Evolution of communication and social behaviour in humans and nonhuman primates, dominance and power dynamics.
Her PhD work examined the relationship between dominance style and communication in primates, with a particular focus on chimpanzees and bonobos. This was based on observational behavioural data and incorporated phylogenetic analysis.
Her current work examines human facial behaviour in naturalistic social interaction, with the aim of understanding the evolutionary origins of individual differences in facial behaviour.
Publications
ROLLINGS, J., KAVANAGH, E., BALABANOVA, A., KEANE, O. and WALLER, B.M., 2024. Facial behaviour and first impressions in computer mediated communication. Computers in Human Behavior, 161: 108391. ISSN 0747-5632
KAVANAGH, E., WHITEHOUSE, J. and WALLER, B.M., 2024. Being facially expressive is socially advantageous. Scientific Reports, 14: 12798. ISSN 2045-2322
WHITEHOUSE, J., MILWARD, S.J., PARKER, M.O., KAVANAGH, E. and WALLER, B.M., 2022. Signal value of stress behaviour. Evolution and Human Behavior. ISSN 1090-5138
Waller, B. M., Kavanagh, E., Micheletta, J., Clark, P. R., & Whitehouse, J. (2022). The face is central to primate multicomponent signals. International Journal of Primatology, 1-17.
Kavanagh, E., Street, S. E., Angwela, F. O., Bergman, T. J., Blaszczyk, M. B., Bolt, L. M., ... & Slocombe, K. (2021). Dominance style is a key predictor of vocal use and evolution across nonhuman primates. Royal Society open science, 8(7), 210873.
Morales Picard, A., Mundry, R., ...Kavanagh, E., ... & Slocombe, K., (2020). Why preen others? Predictors of allopreening in parrots and corvids and comparisons to grooming in great apes. Ethology, 126(2), 207-228.
Pereira, A. S., Kavanagh, E., Hobaiter, C., Slocombe, K. E., & Lameira, A. R. (2020). Chimpanzee lip-smacks confirm primate continuity for speech-rhythm evolution. Biology Letters, 16(5), 20200232.
Rosa, M., Kavanagh, E., Kounov, P., Jarosz, S., Waldzus, S., Collins, E. C., & Giessner, S. (2017). Change commitment in low‐status merger partners: The role of information processing, relative ingroup prototypicality, and merger patterns. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56(3), 618-630.
Wilke, C., Kavanagh, E., Donnellan, E., Waller, B. M., Machanda, Z. P., & Slocombe, K. E. (2017). Production of and responses to unimodal and multimodal signals in wild chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii. Animal Behaviour, 123, 305-316.
