Sascha Schwarz

Social and Personality Psychology | Evolutionary Approaches

I study why people perceive the same individuals and social situations differently, integrating evolutionary theory with social and personality psychology to explain interpersonal attraction, social judgment, and human decision making.


My research

My research combines evolutionary theory with experimental social and personality psychology to understand how individual differences shape social perception, interpersonal attraction, and human decision making. Selected research contributions include:

  • Mate choice and Attraction

I investigate how evolutionary mechanisms shape mate preferences, interpersonal attraction, and romantic decision making across heterosexual and LGBTQ+ populations. My research examines facial attractiveness, and partner selection to better understand human mating strategies.

  • Social Perception

I investigate why people perceive the same social situations differently. This work examines how personality characteristics, motivational factors, and evolved psychological mechanisms influence judgments, impressions, and interpersonal behavior.

  • Disgust & Morality

I examine how different domains of disgust sensitivity influence moral judgments and evaluations of health-related behavior. Recent projects focused on reactions to violations of COVID-19 mitigation measures.

  • Evolutionary Social Psychology

Beyond empirical research, I contribute to the development of evolutionary social psychology through edited books, review articles, and interdisciplinary collaborations that connect evolutionary theory with contemporary psychological research.

Publications
0
peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and book chapters
Recent peer-reviewed journal articles

Schwarz, S.* , Klümper, L.*, Jansen, M., & Agthe, M. (2023). Immoral, infectious, or both? How disgust sensitivity predicts judgments of violations against COVID-19 mitigation actions. Social and Personality Psychology Compass. 
*shared first authors

Klümper, L., Hassebrauck, M. & Schwarz, S. (2023). Intersexual and intrasexual differences in mate selection preferences among lesbian women, gay men, and bisexual women and men. Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Al-Shawaf, L., Lewis, D. M. G., Ghossainy, M. E., Kennair, L. E. O., Mikloušić, I., Schwarz, S., & White, Kaitlyn P. (2023). No evidence for two disgust hypotheses in four countries. Evolutionary Psychology.

Agthe, M., Niesta Kayser, D., Schwarz, S., & Maner, J. K. (2023). Antecedents of the red-romance effect: Men’s attractiveness and women’s fertility. PLoS ONE, 18(4): e0284035.

Klümper, L. & Schwarz, S. (2022). Birds of a feather are eaten together - Individual differences and social processes related to a person’s meat consumption and their implications for social interaction. Umweltpsychologie, 25(2), 12-31.

Klümper, L., Wühr, P., Hassebrauck, M., & Schwarz, S. (2020). Automaticity of facial attractiveness perception and sex-specific mating strategies. Cognition.
Recent books
Cover Das Psychologie-Buch 1

Heise, N., Schwarz, S. & Ostendorf, C.  (Hrsg.) (2026). Das Psychologie-Buch 1 - Band I: Was die Psyche des Menschen ausmacht und wie man sie untersucht. Berlin: Springer.

Heise, N., Schwarz, S. & Ostendorf, C.  (Hrsg.) (2026). Das Psychologie-Buch 2 - Band 2: Worin sich Menschen unterscheiden, durch andere beeinflussen lassen und wie man ihnen helfen kann. Berlin: Springer.

Heise, N., Schwarz, S. & Ostendorf, C.  (Hrsg.) (2026). Das Psychologie-Buch 3 - Band III: Wie sich Menschen entwickeln, miteinander reden, streiten und nachhaltiger werden. Berlin: Springer.

Hammerl, M., Schwarz, S. & Willführ, K.P.  (Eds.) (2025). Evolutioary Social Sciences. A tour.. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

Schwender, C., Schwarz, S., Lange, B.P. & Huckauf, A. (Hrsg) (2018). Geschlecht und Verhalten aus evolutionärer Perspektive. Lengerich: Pabst Science Publishers.

Schwender, C., Lange, B.P. & Schwarz, S.(Hrsg) (2017). Evolutionäre Ästhetik. Lengerich: Pabst Science Publishers.

Teaching
0
lectures and seminars, primarily social and personality psychology
Selected and translated quotes from teaching evaluations

You make the lecture very personable and fun to listen to. In terms of listening, this is my favorite lecture of the semester. Participating online was also very pleasant for me. You seem very approachable and people feel comfortable asking questions. I have also had you in a seminar and had the same opinion there. You encourage people to think independently :)

Anonymous student from course Winter 2024/2025, Lecture Differentielle und Persönlichkeitspsychologie (Differential and Personality Psychology), Bachelor Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Germany

Dr. Sascha Schwarz is simply the best. He explains everything really well and understandably, he knows what we as students want to hear and what we don't, and he is very attentive. With him, I never had the feeling that I wanted to fall asleep because it was very interesting. Please just continue as it has been so far :)

Anonymous student from course Winter 2024/2025, Lecture Differentielle und Persönlichkeitspsychologie (Differential and Personality Psychology), Bachelor Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Germany

The teacher also explained difficult content in a way that was easy to understand, including by using everyday examples.

I am particularly impressed by the fact that Dr. Schwarz aims to explain things in a way that students can understand, so he really does answer questions. He makes you think about content in more depth instead of just
taking it on trust.

Anonymous student from course Winter 2021/2022, Aggression (A), Bachelor Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Germany
The additional information, as well as the stimulating discussions were very good. Above all, I thought it was great to critically question quotations within books and to recognize that you have to pay close attention to the statements made. I really liked the overall format and the  input and it contributed to the fact that I enjoyed participating and learned a lot.

In addition, your manner is very refreshing and ensures that you can follow along well and question things critically. 

This was the best seminar in this program so far.
Anonymous student from course Winter 2024/2025, Personality Psychology, Bachelor Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Germany
The additional information, as well as the stimulating discussions were very good. Above all, I thought it was great to critically question quotations within books and to recognize that you have to pay close attention to the statements made. I really liked the overall format and the  input and it contributed to the fact that I enjoyed participating and learned a lot.

In addition, your manner is very refreshing and ensures that you can follow along well and question things critically. 

This was the best seminar in this program so far.
Anonymous student from course Winter 2024/2025, Personality Psychology, Bachelor Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Germany
This was by far the best course in the digital semester. The learning content was stimulating, the organization was unproblematic, and the recording worked flawlessly. When technical issues arose, the instructor did EVERYTHING possible to maintain access to the content. You could tell how much thought, effort and work went into this event and how much effort it must have taken to create such a student-friendly environment while also conveying the course content in an understandable way at an ideal level. The idea with the memes was not only incredibly funny, but even productive with regard to the teaching objectives! The fact that the event was recorded was also perfect, because you could manage your own time, which was also helpful. If there is a teaching award at this university, can this event please win it?
Anonymous student from course Summer 2020, Lecture Differentielle und Persönlichkeitspsychologie (Differential and Personality Psychology), Bachelor Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Germany
This was by far the best course in the digital semester. The learning content was stimulating, the organization was unproblematic, and the recording worked flawlessly. When technical issues arose, the instructor did EVERYTHING possible to maintain access to the content. You could tell how much thought, effort and work went into this event and how much effort it must have taken to create such a student-friendly environment while also conveying the course content in an understandable way at an ideal level. The idea with the memes was not only incredibly funny, but even productive with regard to the teaching objectives! The fact that the event was recorded was also perfect, because you could manage your own time, which was also helpful. If there is a teaching award at this university, can this event please win it?
Anonymous student from course Summer 2020, Lecture Differentielle und Persönlichkeitspsychologie (Differential and Personality Psychology), Bachelor Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Germany
I appreciate the Flipped Classroom concept. The questions were very interesting for all topics. Of course it is a lot of work to write the assignments, but you knew from the beginning when to hand in what and could organize yourself well.
You also always had enough time, the personal feedback was also appreciative and understandably formulated. In my previous seminars, it was always common for papers to be presented, but I prefer the flipped classroom much, 
much more! The idea should be spread more widely. Also, I was pleased that the seminar (uncomplicated) offered in hybrid, which is also rarely the case.
- Thank you!
Anonymous student from course Summer 2022, Ausgewählte Probleme der differenziellen Psychologie (B), Bachelor Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Germany
- I greatly appreciate your commitment to the hybrid format and the flipped classroom. Also, your offer to offer the Q&A session on 7/4 in the evening as well as in the morning can be highly credited to you and speaks for your
student friendliness.
- You did a good job of trying to stimulate discourse during the Q&A session. It is good that you did not end the session after 5 minutes when no one asked a question, but went into content again selectively.
Anonymous student from course Summer 2022, Evolutionäre Sozialpsychologie I (Evolutionary Social Psychology I), Master Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Germany
Supervision
0
supervised bachelor and master theses in psychology
Academic education

2025

Associate Professor (apl. Professor)

2025

2016

Habilitation (venia legendi psychology)

2008

Dr. phil.

2008

2004

Dipl.-Psych. (equivalent to master's degree in psychology)
Academic positions

2014

Senior Lecturer (Akademischer Oberrat, tenured), University of Wuppertal

2014

2012

Interim professorship "Social psychology" (W2), Technical University Dortmund

2008

Lecturer (Akademischer Rat, tenured), University of Wuppertal

2008

2004

Research assistant (100%), University of Wuppertal
Full CV
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