Dr. Holtzman

Nicholas S. Holtzman, Ph.D.

Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Southeastern Louisiana University. Office Location: Mims Hall (near Subway).

Social-personality psychologist interested in quantitative methods. Teaching and conducting research in Hammond, LA (50 miles northwest of New Orleans).

Academic Biography.

I attended the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, for my freshman year, declaring my major in psychology. Continuing in psychology, I transferred at Loyola University New Orleans ('04), and then I earned my Ph.D. ('11) at Washington University in St. Louis, under the mentorship of Professor Michael Strube, a specialist in social-personality and quantitative psychology. After teaching in St. Louis for a few years, I served as a tenure-track assistant professor and then tenured associate professor at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro from 2013-2022. My partner and I moved to the greater New Orleans metropolitan area in 2022 for family reasons, and since then I've been at Southeastern.

Teaching & Mentoring.

I regularly teach both undergraduate and graduate courses, primarily in technical aspects of psychology, including Principles of Research Design (PSYC 2200) as well as Non-Experimental Design and Analysis (PSYC 6360). I am interested in training the next generation of scholars in psychology, and I aim to hone students' skills for the workforce. About half of the MA-level students whom I've mentored have gone on to Ph.D. programs (e.g., at Binghamton University, Oklahoma State University, Saint Louis University, University of Southern Mississippi, and Washington State University). I regularly begin to mentor one or two new MA students each fall; feel free to email me to inquire about funding, etc.

Research & Interests.

Broadly, I'm curious about what makes people different from each other. More specifically, I'm interested in individual differences in self-focused attention. We have tried to answer questions such as: Who talks/thinks/writes about themselves? And: What are the implications of this self-focused attention? Such questions have prompted my collaborators and I to study personality constructs like narcissism, depression, selfishness, and (more recently) solipsism. My technical and methodological interests include psychometrics, text analysis, R software, multiple regression, and data science. Visit the Research tab at the top of this page for more information on specific papers, or check out Google Scholar or ResearchGate.

Achievements & Editing.

As of May 2025, my collaborators and I have published about 30 peer reviewed papers over the last 15 years. I've co-authored articles in outlets such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology as well as Social Psychological and Personality Science. I have received awards for excellence in peer reviewing. Previously, I served on the editorial boards at Journal of Personality as well as at Journal of Language and Social Psychology. From 2025 to 2028, I am serving as an associate editor at the flagship journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. I enjoy being a part of the field of psychology in this way--seeing the cutting edge research people are engaged in.

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