Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology - Social and Personality

Faculty members in the Social & Personality area are interested in understanding how people think, feel, and act in real-world social situations. There is a particular interest in how people make sense of the social world around them, as represented by research programs on judgment and decision making, attribution, self-knowledge, mood and emotion, and stereotyping/prejudice. Frequent topics of inquiry include whether people reach accurate or erroneous judgments about themselves and others, how people arrive at their decisions, how those decisions can be influenced by emotions or factors outside of awareness, and how people decide whether an action or pattern of behavior merits praise or moral condemnation.

Research facilities include: special rooms for research in problems of perception and cognition, a social-psychology laboratory equipped for experimental and observational studies, electrophysiological, histological, and chemical laboratories, surgery facilities, facilities for the maintenance and behavioral study of vertebrate and invertebrate laboratory animals, darkrooms and shops, an audiovisual studio equipped for the study of teaching, laboratory computers and interacting terminals with the capacity to control equipment in experiments and to do online processing and complex data analyses, and other specialized facilities, both on campus and at various off-campus locations.