Research Faculty (supervise graduate students)
The social psychology area has six full-time faculty. The research interests of these faculty are diverse and provide a spectrum of opportunities for students, ranging from experiences in theory-driven basic research to problem-driven applied research. Incoming students select both a primary and secondary advisor within the area. The program enjoys intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary ties to other units in the psychology department (e.g., developmental, counseling) and on campus (e.g., marketing, advertising, criminology, law, dentistry). Students often seek out course work and research experiences in such complementary units to enhance their backgrounds in their chosen specialties.
Nicholas Coles (Ph.D., University of Tennessee, 2020). Research on emotions, big team science, and AI. *Accepting students for fall 2026
Jose Martinez (Ph.D., Florida State University, 2025). Cooperation; decision-making; dark Triad; relationship science. *Accepting students for fall 2026
Lindsey M. Rodriguez (Ph.D., University of Houston, 2014). Applied social psychologist at the intersection of close relationships, health behaviors, and substance use; developing and evaluating brief interventions for relationship conflict and addictive behaviors (e.g., alcohol, opioids, gambling); expressive writing interventions; intimate partner violence; the role of personality (e.g., emotion regulation attachment orientations) in close relationship processes. *Accepting students for fall 2026
Colin Smith (Ph.D., University of Virginia, 2009). Implicit social cognition: changes in and consequences of implicit evaluations; Political psychology: predicting voting behavior; person by situation interactions based on political orientation.
Gregory Webster (Ph.D., University of Colorado, Boulder, 2006). Prosocial and aggressive behavior, self-esteem, judgment and decision making, methods and data modeling, dynamic systems, evolutionary psychology, social networks, and the psychology of science.
Erin C. Westgate (Ph.D., University of Virginia, 2018). Experimental social psychologist studying social cognition and emotion, with a focus on boredom, interest, and thinking (and why it’s so hard for so many of us!). Basic research on well-being explores the psychologically rich life, and whether we know how meaningful our future will be.
