Welcome to my research lab!
For a list of my publications, please see my Google Scholar profile and/or my ResearchGate profile. To obtain electronic copies of my publications for your personal use, please feel free to email me.
My research has a strong "basic" or "academic" or "scientific psychology" slant. Specifically, my work is either pure basic research (i.e., Bohr's Quadrant) or use-inspired basic research (i.e., Pasteur's Quadrant). My Ph.D. students publish their work in top-tier, highly-cited journals. I particularly welcome applications from international students and students from underrepresented backgrounds (students from underrepresented racial-ethnic groups, mature students, low socioeconomic status students, veterans, and so forth). Vis-à-vis Ph.D. applicants, I also welcome applications from students who are already obtaining their master's degree at another university.
Currently, I am the primary academic advisor for the following Ph.D. students:
I also typically advise 5-6 M.A. students at any given time.
Beyond students who are my formal advisees, I currently work with several other Ph.D. and M.A. students on various projects.
Lab Ph.D. "Alumni" (in order of seniority):
Silvia Bonaccio (Ph.D. 2006)
Rustin Meyer (Ph.D. 2009)
Irini (Eirini) Kokkinou (Ph.D. 2010)
Irwin José (Ph.D. 2013)
Vias Nicolaides (Ph.D. 2016)
Alan Tomassetti (Ph.D. 2017)
Jennifer Green (Ph.D. 2020)
Balca Alaybek (Ph.D. 2020)
Aiva Gorab (Ph.D. 2023)
I conduct research in the following areas:
The interplay of personality and situations, with a focus on "situational strength" and its counterpart, "personality strength." For instance, one ongoing project involves a distinction between "good" and "bad" situational strength, and another involves Cultural Tightness-Looseness as a national/societal-level conceptualization of situational strength. I am very grateful to the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences for funding much of my original work in this area.
Behavior and performance at work, with a focus on deviant/counterproductive work behavior (hopefully not a case of "me-search research!") and organizational citizenship behavior, as well as within-person variability in behavior/performance. For instance, I am currently co-editing a Handbook of Counterproductive Work Behavior. As another example, an ongoing project involves an examination of the impact of remote (vs. in-person) work on counterproductive work behavior.
Judgment and decision-making, with a focus on decision-making skill and style, a judgment analysis process known as "policy capturing," and advice-giving and advice-taking (i.e., "Judge-Advisor Systems" or "Hierarchical Decision-Making Teams"). For instance, a recent meta-analysis compared the impact of rational (or reflective) versus intuitive thinking styles on task performance. As another example, I recently published a review paper on how advice from artificial intelligence (AI), such as but not limited to chatbots like ChatGPT, compares to advice from human advisors. See here for a book I co-edited on judgment and decision-making in workplace settings. An example of more practitioner-focused work is this white paper on smart strategies for improving decision-making, published via the SIOP-SHRM Science of HR series.
Job attitudes (with a particular emphasis on job satisfaction and employee engagement) and mood/emotions at work. For instance, one recent paper reviewed--and introduced industrial and organizational psychologists to--frameworks examining additional (i.e., beyond the conventional "trait") individual differences generated from within-person variability per se (i.e., characteristic levels of within-person variability) or specific aspects/patterns thereof (e.g., "attractor strength"). My primary current focus in this area involves Just-in-Time Adaptive Interventions, also known as Ecological Momentary Interventions (the logical next step from Ecological Momentary Assessments), aimed at emotion regulation when and where most needed: that is, at times and in situations of vulnerability, opportunity, and receptivity. I am very grateful to the National Science Foundation for funding some of my current work in this area.
Technology: behavioral/organizational cybersecurity, remote work, artificial intelligence (AI), and electronic performance monitoring. These are relatively recent areas of interest that provide specific settings in which to not just apply but also extend my other research interests. Specifically, vis-à-vis cybersecurity, I have become interested in Cyber Security Incident Response Teams, performance metrics, naturalistic decision making, cognitive task analysis, and decision-making interventions such as the "pre-mortem." See here for a book on organizational science contributions to cybersecurity. In terms of applied work, see here for a recent advocacy effort on defense and security I led for the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). However, I am also very interested in basic research involving cybersecurity. For instance, one recent paper provided an overview of existing research and suggested an expansive agenda for future research at the intersection of organizational science and cybersecurity. I am very grateful to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (along with its Swedish and Dutch counterparts) and the National Science Foundation for funding much of my work on cybersecurity. Examples of my research on remote work and AI are provided in previous sections, so I will not repeat myself here--but I'll note that I am very interested in continuing to combine these topics with my other research interests. Additionally, I have given several talks to applied audiences, summarizing research on the relationships of remote work and electronic performance monitoring with employee performance.
A theme common to much of (though by no means all) my work involves the study of within-person variability in job performance (and behavior more generally), mood, personality, and so forth as a function of changes across situations and time