Department of Psychology

Social Program Core Faculty

The Social Psychology program at Penn State is designed to train students in social psychological theory and research. Course work and research and prepare them for careers in academic or applied settings. Students develop empirical research experience through collaboration with faculty and through the development of their own research. Each student selects a program of study in consultation with an advisory committee of her or his own choosing. Faculty and students in social psychology, along with several faculty outside of the social area, meet weekly to discuss on-going research projects.

Reginald B. Adams, Jr., Ph.D., 2002, Dartmouth College
Reginald Adams is interested in how we extract social and emotional meaning from nonverbal cues, particularly via the face. His work addresses how multiple social messages (e.g., emotion, gender, race, age, etc.) combine and interact to form unified representations that guide our impressions of and responses to others. Of particular interest is the functional correspondence between static and expressive cues; at a fundamental level both signal basic intentions to approach-avoid, dominate, and/or affiliate. With this in mind, his current work examines the influences of eye gaze, social group memberships (e.g., gender and race), and facial appearance on the way we process and perceive others’ mental and emotional states. Although his questions are social psychological in origin, his research draws upon visual cognition and affective neuroscience to address social perception at the functional and neuroanatomical levels.

Karen Gasper, Ph.D., 1999, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign
Karen Gasper is interested in affect and social cognition. Currently, her research examines the effect of both momentary and long-term feelings on information processing, the factors that influence affect regulation, and situational and individual differences in emotional understanding and experience. Some projects have investigated the influence of trait and state anxiety on judgment, the effect of mood on creativity, and the factors that reduce the influence of affect on information processing.

Phillip Atiba Goff, Ph.D., 2005, Stanford University
Phillip Atiba Goff's research investigates the notion that our representations of self and others deeply influence our social and political worlds. As a stereotype threat researcher, his work suggests that the threat of being seen as racist can have the ironic effect of producing racial discrimination, and can lead to the endorsement of negative racial ideologies. Understanding how white racial identity is experienced in the United States is also part of his research agenda. Lastly, he conducts research on how dominant groups mentally represent racial minorities, and how these mental representations can lead to discriminatory behavior, particularly in the criminal justice system.

Melvin Mark, Ph.D., 1979, Northwestern University
Mel Mark's current interests include: (1) application of recent models of affect to prevention and to risk-taking behaviors; (2) the appropriate use of social science research in social policy, particularly in the context of program evaluation; and (3) a revision and extension of terror management theory.

Stephanie Shields, Ph.D., 1976, The Pennsylvania State University
Stephanie Shields' research is at the intersection of the psychology of emotion, the psychology of gender, and feminist psychology. She studies the relationship between "felt " emotion (i.e., emotion consciousness) and emotion as a cultural construct. Her current work focuses on questions concerning when, why, and how emotion and emotionality are explicitly labeled in everyday situations. She is also interested in the history of psychology, especially the psychology of women and women's participation in American psychology.

Janet K. Swim, Ph.D., 1988, University of Minnesota
Janet Swim's interests are in research on stereotyping and prejudice. She has conducted research on the impact of gender belief systems on judgments about and evaluations of women and men. She has also examined the content of stereotypes and prejudice against women. Additionally, she is working on prejudice from the perspective of the target prejudice. This includes research on women's experiences with sexism, African American women's and men's experiences with racism, expectations about other people's prejudice and stereotypes, African Americans' racial identity, and reactions to subtle and overt forms of sexism and racism. Other research she has conducted in psychology and law also emphasizes gender issues.

Theresa K. Vescio, Ph.D., 1996, University of Kansas
Theresa Vescio's primary research interests fall under the rubric of stereotyping and prejudice. Within that context, she examines questions of how global societal stereotypes (a) are internalized by high and low prejudice people, (b) affect dominant group members' judgment of and behavior toward members of negatively stereotyped groups, and (c) influence the self-definition of members of negatively stereotyped groups.