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Core Faculty of the Social Program

Richard Eibach, Assistant Professor
B.A. (Cornell), Ph.D. (Cornell)

My research focuses on social judgment, with an emphasis on the study of construal processes, naive realism, and egocentrism. More specifically I study judgmental biases that influence perceptions of social and personal change. I apply a constructivist perspective, investigating how psychological biases interact with dominant cultural frames to influence judgments of change. My research examines individual biases that cause people to perceive illusory patterns of societal decline, intergroup biases that polarize perceptions of progress towards racial and gender equality, and the phenomenological cues that influence the recognition of personal aging. I am also interested in social movement dynamics, the development of moral panics, and the relative success of competing ideologies. The theme of change links my interests in social judgment, autobiographical memory processes, intergroup conflict, political psychology, and life-course transitions.

Geoff Fong, Professor
(AB, Stanford; PhD, Michigan; Recipient of the Distinguished Teacher Award)

My research focuses on combining psychological theories and research methods with traditional epidemiological survey methods to evaluate the impact of tobacco control policies on entire populations of countries. Tobacco use is the number one preventable cause of death throughout the world, and is projected to kill one billion people in the 21st Century, most of whom live in low and middle-income countries. I am the Founder and Chief Principal Investigator of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (the ITC Project). The overall objective of the ITC Project is to evaluate the psychosocial and behavioral impact of tobacco control policies of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the first-ever health treaty. In all, the ITC Project is currently conducting prospective cohort surveys of tobacco use to evaluate the effects of FCTC policies (which include tobacco warning labels, smoke-free laws, increased tobacco taxation, bans/restrictions on tobacco advertising and marketing) in 20 countries, inhabited by over 50% of the world's population and 70% of the world’s tobacco users. Other areas of tobacco research include the impact of media depictions of smoking on explicit and implicit attitudes, and the measurement of tobacco smoke pollution in environments including casinos, outdoor patios, and cars. I have also conducted research in other domains of health behavior, including the effects of alcohol intoxication on risky health behaviors (e.g., risky sex), and on the creation, implementation, and evaluation of behavioral interventions (safer sex and abstinence) to reduce HIV/STD risk among inner-city adolescents in the United States.
Details on our global health research can be found at the ITC Project website (http://www.itcproject.org)

John Holmes, Professor
(BA, MA, Carleton; PhD, North Carolina)

The focus of my research interests is interpersonal relations, with particular emphasis on the influence of expectations and emotions on social perception in close relationships. Recent empirical work has explored the impact of felt insecurity, concerns about a partner's caring, on the regulation of closeness and interdependence in relationships (the "dependence-regulation model"). Recent theoretical work has focused on developing and applying Interdependence Theory formulations of relationships.

Mike Ross, Professor
(BA, Toronto; MA, PhD, North Carolina)

My interests cover various areas in social psychology, with a focus on theoretically driven research on socially significant issues. One current line of research concerns apologies. I am particularly intrigued by the recent flurry of political apologies for prejudicial treatment of minorities that occurred decades or even centuries earlier. Why should politicians apologize for government actions in the distant past that they did not commit? What determines the impact of such apologies on the targeted minority and the non victimized majority? Who supports or opposes redress for past victimization and why? My student colleagues and I are conducting research designed to answer these questions. We are also conducting parallel research on more everyday apologies to understand their antecedents, forms, and consequences. Our other research interests extend to culture, revenge, and cognitive aging. The research on culture focuses on self and social understanding. In the research on revenge, we are interested in cultural, religious, and other influences on people’s responses to an aggressor. The research on cognitive aging focuses on how older people offset memory deficits in their everyday lives.

Please visit our Culture, Conflict and Memory Lab website for more information about our research and lab group.

Steve Spencer, Professor
(AB, Hope; PhD, Michigan)

I do research on motivation and the self, particularly on how these factors affect stereotyping and prejudice. In examining motivation and the self, I have begun to examine how implicit processes that are outside of people's awareness affect people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In examining stereotyping and prejudice, I look at how threats to the self-concept can lead to stereotyping and prejudice, and how this stereotyping and prejudice affects subsequent feelings about the self. In the other research, I also examine how being a member of a stereotyped group affects people's self-concept and academic performance.

Joanne Wood, Professor
(BA Wisconsin; MA, PhD California, Los Angeles)

My current research concerns dispositional self-esteem—-one’s overall feelings about oneself—-and how self-esteem is perpetuated in daily life. In particular, I focus on self-esteem differences in emotion regulation and close relationships. My collaborators and I have found that people with high self-esteem are more likely than those with low self-esteem to try to improve their moods when they are sad, as well as to savor their moods when they are happy. Lows sometimes even try to dampen their happiness. Such differences in emotion regulation probably help to maintain self-esteem differences. Our current studies ask such questions as: How do partners in romantic relationships influence each other’s moods? Do lows and highs differ in how they react to their partner’s moods? After a success, why do lows return to their usual level of self-worth? How do lows and highs differ in their emotional expressiveness and self-disclosure to other people?

Mark Zanna, Professor
(BA, PhD, Yale; FRSC; Recipient of Excellence in Research Award)

My area of research is the psychology of attitudes. In the domain of communication and persuasion, I have conducted research on overcoming resistance to change (e.g., subliminal priming and persuasion, self-affirmation and persuasion, and narrative persuasion). In the domain of implicit attitudes I have conducted research on aversive racists (i.e., those low in explicit prejudice, but high in implicit prejudice) and on individuals with defensive self-esteem (i.e., those high in explicit self-esteem, but low in implicit self-esteem). In the domain of health, I have conducted research testing a 'safer sex' intervention, evaluated Canada's new cigarette warning labels, and investigated the subtle effects of smoking in feature films on implicit cognition (e.g., implicit attitudes and implicit norms). Currently, I am investigating implicit norms (i.e., automatic associations of what society likes vs. dislikes) in several domains.