A major theme underlying Social and Personality Psychology at Brock is the study of psychological approaches to personal, interpersonal, and social issues – issues that have implications for understanding ourselves and our interactions with other persons, groups, and institutions.
Nature of the Program
At Brock, training of social-personality graduate students emphasizes both theoretical and methodological aspects of the discipline. Our social-personality focus prepares graduate students for careers in academic, research, and applied settings.
At both the MA and PhD levels, requirements are designed to give students breadth and depth of knowledge in the field. At the doctoral level, students will extend their teaching, research and applied skills to allow them to successfully pursue their post-graduate careers.
Students and faculty meet regularly to discuss readings and pressing issues in social and personality psychology. Students are given multiple opportunities to present their research ideas and gain feedback from their peers and faculty members.
Research environment
We represent a broad group of researchers who share some overlapping interests. Our studies make use of diverse methods and technologies: observational methods, self-report questionnaires and interviews (in labs and via the internet), experimental procedures, large-scale longitudinal studies, dyadic approaches, daily experience method, etc.
Most projects are funded through agencies such as SSHRC. Students are encouraged to collaborate with multiple members of faculty to develop and strengthen their research experience. Students present their research at national and international academic conferences, as well as publish their findings in high-quality peer-reviewed outlets.
Key Research Questions include
- major dimensions of personality variation
- emotional experience and emotion regulation (special emphasis on their relation to the quality of interpersonal relationships)
- stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination
- forensic psychology
- psychopathy and victim selection
- altruism and integrity testing
- ideology
- subjective well-being
- temporal self-evaluations
- perception of emotion
- close relationships (friends, parent-child, romantic)
Social/Personality Faculty Members
- Mike Ashton Personality structure and assessment
- Angela Book Psychopathy, victim selection, emotion perception
- Michael Busseri Subjective well-being, temporal self-evaluations
- William Hall Diversity, inclusion, gender
- Gordon Hodson Intergroup relations, prejudice, discrimination, dehumanization
- Sabrina Thai Social comparison, close relationships
