I use Researchgate as a hub for my work because it conveniently also tracks readership / statistics automatically.
See my Google Scholar profile here.
Please see my C.V. section for a fully populated list of my published / presented research.
Work available for view/download on Research-Gate (Researchgate main page)
Along with Drs. Fabrigar and Guyer, I have been investigating different aspects of the voice and their implications for attitude change. Specifically, different aspects of the voice such as vocal intonation (rising versus falling), speed (slow versus fast), and pitch (low versus high) have implications for attitude change, such as informing perceptions of the source's confidence.
Vocal (and other sources of) pitch influences thought confidence in some surprising ways (Guyer, Briñol, Vaughan-Johnston, et al., 2025 - PSPB)
Curvilinear patterns of vocal speed relating to persuasion-related processing, with mechanism data (Guyer, Vaughan-Johnston, et al., 2025 - JNVB)
The relation of falling (vs rising) vocal intonation to persuasion-related processing (Vaughan-Johnston et al., 2024 - PSPB)
A novel theory accounting for vocal affect's relationship with persuasion (Vaughan-Johnston et al., 2021 - JNVB)
A review of how vocal confidence (and particularly pitch) influences persuasion through multiple processes (Guyer, Briñol, Vaughan-Johnston, et al., 2021- JNVB)
Vocal affect in affective persuasive messages (Guyer, Fabrigar, Vaughan-Johnston, et al., 2018 - JESP)
Vocal confidence has several routes to influencing persuasion (Guyer, Fabrigar, & Vaughan-Johnston, 2019 - PSPB)
People may view some attitudes as beliefs that they believe they ought or or would ideally hold ("desired attitudes"). However, the antecedents of these desired attitudes are less well understood, and many of the targets of these desires (e.g., a desire to hold generally neutral attitudes) remain under-examined. I am examining how we might (de)activate desired attitudes, using paradigms inspired by self-discrepancy, cognitive dissonance, and self-persuasion theories.
A novel construct, neutrality preference, captures individual differences in people's bias for neutral-valenced information (Vaughan-Johnston et al., 2025 - JEP:G)
Desired attitudes can shape actual attitude change (even without new information) (Vaughan-Johnston et al., 2023 - JESP)
How might beliefs about self-esteem influence how powerful of a role self-esteem actually plays in individuals' mental lives? Along with Dr. Jill Jacobson, I have developed a scale of self-esteem importance that measures beliefs about self-esteem. Self-esteem importance (i) affects how people react emotionally to gaining/losing self-esteem, (ii) orients individuals towards self-enhancing and self-protective behaviours, and (iii) shapes adolescents' and young adults' peer defending behaviors in bullying episodes.
Manipulated self-esteem importance increases emotional reactions to evaluative feedback about oneself (Vaughan-Johnston & Jacobson, 2021 - C&E)
Self-esteem importance is related to a desire for self-enhancement (Vaughan-Johnston & Jacobson, 2021 - PAID)
Self-esteem importance is related to defending behaviors and prosocial intentions among adults and adolescents (Vaughan-Johnston et al., 2020 - S&I)
Self-esteem importance is linked with social sensitivity - bigger positive/negative reactions to acceptance/rejection. We also find that self-esteem importance has substantial test-retest reliability, and that women (vs men) and Euro-Canadians (vs Asian-Canadians) endorse these beliefs more (Vaughan-Johnston & Jacobson, 2021 - PAID).
It is widely understood that extraverts have higher self-esteem than introverts, but less clearly established why this relationship exists. How might introverts and extraverts differ in their use of self-esteem maintenance tactics? We find that extraverts are not "generically" better at obtaining self-esteem from strategies, but specifically excel in gaining self-esteem from social comparisons, particularly because they see themselves as more similar to their peers (than do introverts), and similarity is a prerequisite for meaningful comparison.
Downward social comparison produces more self-esteem for extraverts than for introverts (Vaughan-Johnston et al., 2021 - PSPB)
Experiential avoidance measures such as the AAQ-2 and MEAQ have become popular in clinical and social-personality circles. Experiential avoidance is the attempt to suppress, avoid, or downplay 'internal experiences' such as emotions and uncomfortable thoughts; it has been widely understood as an individual difference. However, previous studies have shown its problematic overlap with more parsimonious constructs, and it is unclear whether it has sustainable incremental validity from mood and attachment measures. We are examining experiential avoidance's incremental validity in the context of stressful / emotionally provocative scenarios.
Experiential avoidance interferes with acceptance-based emotion regulation (Vaughan-Johnston et al., 2020 - JRP)
Experiential avoidance as a thought-biasing variable (Quickert, Vaughan-Johnston, & MacDonald, 2020 - PAID)
Experiential avoidance - incremental validity (Vaughan-Johnston, Quickert, & MacDonald, 2016 - PAID)