Curriculum Vita

Research Interests:

One’s beliefs play a central role in informing and directing one’s behavior. Current theories about how people manage these beliefs suggest that people are much like scientists, in that they have hypotheses and revise these hypotheses based on available data. People are motivated, however, to maintain existing beliefs and seek out information that confirms their existing beliefs or theories about how the world works. My research focuses on how people acquire, express, maintain, and adjust these beliefs based on information that is either confirmatory or contradictory. I have substantive interests in applied social cognition including processes involved in the evaluation of others and the assessment of interpersonal relationships. I have investigated topics such as the reaction to consistent and inconsistent research findings in social psychology by college students, the development of lay theories about human social behavior, the use of consistent and inconsistent knowledge in making real estate decisions (business decision making), the expression of lay knowledge regarding jealousy in close relationships, and the expression of implicit beliefs (implicit stereotypes) toward people of varying ethnic and social groups. I also have an interest in meta-analytic procedures and how these techniques have influenced research in social psychology.