Front row: Hanyi (Haylee) Min, Susan J. Simkins (formerly Mohammed), Alicia Grandey

Second row: James LeBreton, Rustin Meyer

Other related faculty: Amie Skattebo, Jason Williams, Barbara, Watters, Greg Loviscky, Jim Farr, Rick Jacobs, Paul Obidinski

Research/Graduate Faculty

Alicia Grandey Ph.D. 1999, Colorado State University, Liberal Arts Professor

Alicia Grandey’s primary stream of research is on employee wellbeing broadly, and specifically on emotional labor.  She examines the tradeoffs of emotional labor for performance (i.e., customer satisfaction, supervisor ratings) and personal health (i.e., job satisfaction, burnout), as well as the intersection with diversity based on gender, national culture, and politics.   She seeks students who are curious and proactive about learning, open and responsive to suggestions, and want to use a variety of theories and methods (experience-sampling, field surveys, observation, lab experiments).

Click HERE for more information about Dr. Grandey's research lab.

Curriculum Vitae

James LeBreton Ph.D. 2002, University of Tennessee, Professor

My research focuses on measuring implicit or unconscious aspects of personality and understanding how these aspects of personality are related to human behavior.  During the last 17 years I have been involved in the development and validation of several tests designed to measure implicit motives.  Most of this work has focused on the measurement of the motive to aggress and linking it to outcomes such as counterproductive work behavior, leadership, team processes and performance, and test faking. 
I have also published in the areas of research methods and statistics. My current projects focus on issues associated with 1) relative importance of predictors in multiple regression, 2) interrater agreement and reliability, and 3) analyzing multilevel and longitudinal data.

For more detailed information please visit his lab website.

Curriculum Vitae

Rustin Meyer Ph.D. 2009, Purdue University, Assistant Professor

Rustin Meyer's research focuses on workplace applications of interactionism—the belief that human behavior is a joint function of individuals and the situations they experience. Toward this end, Rustin’s primary streams of research focus on better understanding individuals and work situations in mutually commensurate ways. This includes (a) improving our theoretical and empirical conceptualization of “situational strength” (the idea that various situational characteristics restrict the expression and, therefore, criterion-related validity of dispositional characteristics); (b) creating an updateable, hierarchical taxonomy that categorizes types of situations on the basis of their defining characteristics; and (c) refining interactionism-relevant research methods.

For more detailed information please visit his lab website.

Susan J. Simkins (formerly Mohammed) Ph.D. 1996, The Ohio State University, Professor

Susan Simkin’s research program broadly focuses on investigating the drivers of effective teamwork and performance, with specific emphases on team composition/diversity, team cognition/mental models, and the integration of time in team research. Although she has investigated a wide range of individual differences in teams (e.g., demographics, cognitive ability, experience, Big Five personality traits), her more recent work examines the conditions under which temporal diversity (e.g., time urgency, pacing style, polychronicity) is helpful or harmful for team performance. In addition, Dr. Mohammed’s team mental model research highlights the importance of team members being “on the same page” with what and how work needs to be accomplished. Recent work has emphasized the need for team members to also reach agreement on when work needs to be completed. A second line of research is devoted to the factors that affect decision making, with current studies focusing on decision styles.

Hanyi (Haylee) Min Ph.D. 2018, Bowling Green State University, Assistant Professor

Haylee Min's research mainly focuses on the development and application of advanced statistical methods (e.g., machine learning techniques) and psychometrics tools (e.g., item response theory) to answer organizational questions. Haylee is especially interested in extending the use of machine learning (ML) techniques to help address important organizational challenges.  For instance, Haylee is using ML techniques to examine performance trajectories and dynamics overtime. Haylee is also working to improve the feasibility and accessibility of using ML techniques by organizational researchers and practitioners. For example, how can we report ML results in a clear and transparent way that will help improve the replicability of our findings. Additional interests related to workplace diversity, especially detecting subtle forms of discrimination using advanced techniques (e.g., natural language processing algorithms to detect subtle discrimination in language).

Click HERE for more information about Haylee's research

Teaching Professors

Greg Loviscky, Ph.D. 2000, Pennsylvania State University

Amie Skattebo, Ph.D. 2009, Pennsylvania State University

Barbara Watters, Ph.D. 1989, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Jason Williams, Ph.D., Central Michigan University

Emeritus Faculty

James L. Farr Ph.D. 1971, University of Maryland, Professor Emeritus

Jim Farr (officially retired as of June 30, 2013) is currently working in the Department of Psychology on a part-time basis, primarily involved in the development of online degree programs.

Research interests: Personnel selection, criterion development, work motivation, performance feedback seeking and giving; issues related to older workers’ job performance and motivation; innovation and creativity.

Rick R. Jacobs Ph.D. 1978, University of California: Berkeley, Professor

Rick Jacobs (officially retired as of June 30, 2019) will be serving as a Research Fellow at the Army Research Institute as part of the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area.  Specifically, ARI has put together an expert panel on classification (or job assignment) to address the question of, "How can the Army improve the assignment process to increase Soldier-job fit by considering non-technical predictors (e.g., personality, temperament, work-interest) and criterion (e.g., motivation, job-fit, discipline)?"  Dr. Jacobs will be joining a distinguished panel including Leaetta Hough, Fred Oswald, Ann Marie Ryan, Neal Schmitt and Paul Sackett.

Research interests: Assessment Centers and their use in assisting college student’s preparation for leadership careers, testing and the relationship between validity and adverse impact, adverse impact – its definition, measurement and factors that complicate its explanation, as well as the role of experience in understanding performance.

For more detailed information please visit his blog.

Curriculum Vitae

For additional faculty information, please visit the Penn State Department of Psychology.