Welcome to the Social Psychology Program at Miami University. Our program is comprised of several faculty members who teach a variety of undergraduate courses as well as supervise the training of our graduate students in our Social Psychology doctoral program. To the right is our 2008 group photo, taken inside our new Psychology Building, which features outstanding research space and teaching facilities.

Throughout the year, we have many events, including weekly SPRIG (social psychology research interest group) brownbags, visiting speakers in our department's colloquium series, and numerous conferences that feature strong social psychology components.

We are pleased to announce that Amy Summerville has now joined our faculty as an Assistant Professor of Psychology. Summerville recently completed her Ph.D. in Psychology at the Univ. of Illinois. Her primary research interests include counterfactual ("if only...") thinking and its implications, affect and its influence on social judgment, culture, and self-regulation processes. We're excited to have Amy join our social program.

Also, we're excited about the considerable degree of grant support that our social faculty receive from the National Science Foundation. Most recently, Amanda Diekman was awarded a $338,510 grant to study "The missing piece of the STEM puzzle: The role of communion in women's STEM career decisions." This project, funded through 2011, examines how women's communal, other-oriented goals influence their decisions to enter or leave science and technology careers. Even talented women may select out of STEM careers if they perceive these careers as incompatible with highly-valued communal goals. In a series of studies, she and her students will investigate how an individual's communal goals intersect with beliefs about careers, as well as career-related experience, to predict STEM-related activities.

In addition to this most-recent grant award, several other faculty members in the social area have active NSF support for their research activities:
Susanne Abele and Gary Stasser supporting their on-going research on tacit coordination.
Kurt Hugenberg supporting his continuing work examining cross-race facial identification.
Heather Claypool supporting her program of research on how the experience of familiarity affects judgments and feelings.
Allen McConnell supporting his research examining the processes underlying stereotype threat.

Our graduate students are also frequently recognized for their outstanding work. Most recently, Christina Brown was named a recipient of the 2008 College of Arts and Science Graduate Student Teaching Award. Brown has taught a number of classes, ranging from introductory psychology, to introductory social psychology, to advanced seminars on emotion and affect. Her research explores how the self affects one's affective experiences.

If you are considering applying to our doctoral program, you can learn more about our program and its faculty's research interests by reading their homepages and by e-mailing them. Also, you are encouraged to contact our graduate students for their perspectives on our program. If you want to learn more about social psychology in general (e.g., other social programs and other social psychologists from around the world, teaching resources on the web), visit the Social Psychology Network.

Finally, we would like to extend a big welcome to our new graduate students who will be joining us in the 2008-09 academic year: Sara Austin, Emily Clark, Matthew Groebe, and Isaiah Jones. Welcome to Miami University!