Department of Psychology
Announcements
- July 1, 2025: A very warm welcome to our three new faculty: Dr. Na Yeon Kim, Dr. Bernardette Pinetta, and Dr. Deepa Ramamurthy! In addition, please welcome our new vice chair, Dr. Liz Davis.
- June 18, 2025: Congratulations to Dr. Katherine Nelson-Coffey, a former Ph.D. student with Dr. Lyubomirsky, for winning the International Positive Psychology Association Early Career Researcher Award.
- June 1, 2025: Congratulations to Tania Rodriguez for being awarded a Graduate Dean’s Dissertation Research Grant.
- May 15, 2025: Chelsea McElwee, a Ph.D. student with Dr. Aerika Loyd, was awarded a $5000 mini-grant through the UCR Center for Healthy Communities.
- May 15, 2025: Two UCR Psychology undergraduate students (Jessica Boyd and Sierra Sutton) attended the 2025 Insure the Uninsured Project (ITUP) Conference as part of Dr. Aerika Loyd's collaborative grant with UCI and UCM. Their inspiring reflections are on the Cal-IHEA website.
Psychology in the News
July 02, 2025
Psychologist receives 2025 Bowlby-Ainsworth Award
Tuppett Yates is recognized for her research on attachment and trauma
June 09, 2025
Link among racial identity, GPAs, alcohol use studied
For many students of color, adjusting to college means navigating unfamiliar academic and social settings, often while also managing stress borne from experiences relating to race.
A UC Riverside study, which appeared in the journal Race and Social Problems, sought to better understand their experiences, to find what helped students to be more successful academically and what influenced maladaptive behaviors such as alcohol consumption.
June 09, 2025
Researchers contribute chapter to pediatric psychology handbook
Addressing DEI meaningfully will help reduce disparities and improve well-being, authors argue
May 20, 2025
Pandemic misinformation at RivCo meetings studied
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there were major public health efforts to reduce infection rates and mitigate serious health effects of the disease through promotion of behavior such as getting vaccinated and wearing masks. An obstacle was the broad and rapid spread of misinformation about the coronavirus that causes the illness and effective ways to combat it. This led to mistrust of health authorities and resistance to adopting protective behavior.
March 10, 2025
UCR psychology researchers part of $4.7 million grant
UC Riverside psychology researchers Kate Sweeny and Elizabeth Davis are among the recipients of a $4.7 million grant from the Templeton Religion Trust. The grant will be used to advance research on patience, with a focus on what can be learned from parents of adolescents who face unique forms of adversity.
March 01, 2024
Minoritized groups face high anxiety when taking part in research experiments
Preadolescent girls used an MRI scanner in UC Riverside-led study
January 10, 2024
Psychology research 'giant' Robert Rosenthal has died
Robert Rosenthal, a father of meta-analysis who was named one of the 20th century's top 100 psychologists, died Jan. 5 at 90.
Twenty-five years ago, following his retirement from Harvard University, Rosenthal joined the UC Riverside faculty. He was named a University Professor in 2008 by the University of California system, a distinction shared by only 40 professors in UC’s history.
He retired from his full-time UCR professorship in spring 2018 but continued teaching part-time in UCR’s Graduate Division through fall quarter 2023.
May 10, 2023
Older adults are more easily distracted
While engaged in a physical task requiring effort, such as driving a car or carrying grocery bags, older adults are more likely than younger adults to be distracted by items irrelevant to the task at hand, a University of California, Riverside, study reports.
The study assessed the interaction between physical exertion and short-term memory performance when distractors were present or absent in younger and older adults.
Faculty in the News
- July 1, 2025: Dr. Rachel Wu interviewed by WalletHub.com.
- June 18, 2025: Dr. Megan Robbins interviewed by Vox.
- May 20, 2025: Dr. Tuppett Yates, the Department Chair, was featured in UCR Magazine.
- May 1, 2025: Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky was featured in The New York Times.
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