Rate My Professor Dick Stevenson

Professor Dick Stevenson serves as Professor in the School of Psychological Sciences at Macquarie University, where he is also affiliated with the Lifespan Health and Wellbeing Research Centre. He earned his BSc (Hons) in Biological Science from the University of London, followed by an MSc and DPhil in Experimental Psychology from the University of Sussex. After completing his doctorate, Stevenson held postdoctoral positions at CSIRO Food Science Australia, the University of Sydney Department of Psychology, and the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. He joined the Department of Psychology at Macquarie University as a Lecturer in 1998 and advanced to the rank of Professor in 2010. Throughout his career, he has supervised numerous research projects employing diverse methodologies, including neuroimaging, neuropsychology, experimental designs, developmental psychology, surveys, interviews, and clinical trials, on topics ranging from epilepsy, multisensory perception, and synesthesia to nutritional neuroscience, food cravings, phobias, hallucinations, and disgust.

Stevenson's research focuses on food and eating, interoception, evolutionary psychology, and applied experimental psychology. His ongoing projects explore the regulation of food intake and obesity, food preferences and cravings, desire, body image, junk food and naturalness, disgust and stigmatisation, time perception, microdosing psychedelics, multisensory and chemosensory perception, hallucinations, imagery, and critiques of 'voodoo' science. He has produced 283 research outputs, comprising 219 journal articles, 24 book chapters, and 24 review articles. Key publications include "Psychological induction of interoceptive states" (2026, Consciousness and Cognition), "Alcohol desire influenced by memory recollection and personality" (2026, Personality and Individual Differences), "Evaluating psychological accounts of diet-related mood improvements using novel control conditions" (2026, Appetite), "Sound source ambiguity augments illusory mislocalisation of computer presented stomach rumbles to self" (2026, Psychological Research), and the book "Diet impacts on brain and mind" (2023). His scholarship is evidenced by 12,241 citations and an h-index of 56 on Scopus. Stevenson convenes units such as Appetite: The Psychology of Eating and Drinking and Advanced Topics in Health Psychology.