Department of Psychology
Social/Personality Psychology
The program in Social/Personality Psychology is a nationally prominent program of research and graduate education that offers research training and coursework in:
- Emotion and Emotion Regulation
- Group Processes & Intergroup Relations
- Health & Well-Being
- Organizational Leadership
- Personality
- Race & Ethnicity
- Self & Identity
- Research Methodology & Quantitative Psychology
- Social Cognition
- Social Neuroscience
The social/personality area has particular and unique strengths in diversity & inequality psychology and health & well-being. Faculty in the area have audio-visual laboratories and observation rooms, and use state-of-the-art assessment methods including Electronically-Activated Recorders (i.e., EAR devices), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), physiological measures, mathematical modeling, experience sampling, life story interviews, among others.
Outside the laboratory, UCR social/personality area faculty have conducted research in Riverside city classrooms, local hospitals and clinics, other community settings, and businesses in California and around the world. Social/personality area faculty also have close ties with the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and UCR’s School of Medicine and Center for Healthy Communities.
Grant Title: A Model of Generalized Ingroup Recognition Advantage
PI: Jimmy Calanchini
Source: National Science Foundation
Summary: The goal of this project is to study the mechanisms and boundary conditions of ingroup recognition, and the qualitative nature of the cognitive processes that underlie it.
Grant Title: An emotion-motivation-obstruction approach to waiting and worry
PI: Kate Sweeny
Source: National Science Foundation
Summary: These 9 studies test the tenets of the newly-proposed Emotion-Motivation-Obstruction model, which aims to explain why sometimes emotions plague our health and well-being and other times come and go without consequence.
Grant Title: Patience planning in psychology: Construct refinement and building an empirical base for interdisciplinary inquiry
PI: Kate Sweeny
Source: Templeton Foundation
Summary: This project investigates the psychological concept- and measurement-building stages of a broader interdisciplinary collaboration on patience.
Grant Title: The social impact and malleability of neural biases in perceptual deindividuation
PI: Brent Hughes
Source: National Science Foundation
Grant Title: How can people connect more deeply through self-disclosure? Testing the linguistic, nonverbal, and neural mechanisms of successful communication
PI: Brent Hughes
Grant Title: What if they look like us? Deindividuation of social outgroup members in the absence of between-group visual differences
PI: Brent Hughes
Source: BSF US-Israel Binational Science Foundation
- Jimmy Calanchini’s recent paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology provides insight into why sexual minority people choose to live in one place over another.
- Stephen Antonopolis’ recent article in Perspectives on Psychological Science proposes a model to organize research for policy.
- Sonja Lyubormirsky’s recent work in Affective Science shows that people become equally happier when they expressed gratitude privately versus over text versus over social media, but sending a gratitude text to a specific person was experienced as the most connecting.
- Sonja Lyubormirsky’s new article in Affective Science reveals that writing gratitude letters was more happiness-producing (but also more indebtedness-producing) than writing gratitude lists (i.e., counting blessings).
- Sonja Lyubormirsky’s new paper in Scientific Reports shows that conversations under the acute influence of MDMA led people to feel more close and connected to their conversation partners (both immediately and a week later), but so did conversations under the acute influence of methamphetamine
- Jimmy Calanchini weighed in on judgment biases for the CBC’s Ideas with Nahlah Ayed.
- Monica Beals – a recent graduate of Kate Sweeny’s lab – has accepted an assistant professor position at Northern Arizona University.
- Missy Wilson – a recent graduate of Kate Sweeny’s lab –has accepted an assistant professor position at Norco Community College.
- Annie Regan – a recent graduate of Sonja Lyubormirsky’s lab – has accepted a UX research position at Google.
- Jacob Elder – a recent graduate of Brent Hughes’ lab – has accepted a Behavioral Scientist position at Vanguard.
- Yrian Derreumaux – a recent graduate of Brent Hughes’ lab – has accepted a Quantitative UX research position at Google.
- Kate Sweeny is featured on the Science of Personality Podcast and The Art of Manliness Podcast.
- Sonja Lyubomirsky is featured in the Netflix film Mission: JOY.
- Stephen Antonopolis’ research on cross-race friendships was featured on the Character & Context Blog.