Program Overview

The Rutgers Social Psychology Ph.D. Program prepares students for research and teaching careers in both academic and nonacademic settings. Students work closely with faculty members on research projects of mutual interest. Rutgers has a very favorable ratio of about two to three graduate students per professor. Social Psychology faculty members employ state of the art research methods including the latest computer based procedures for assessing implicit beliefs and attitudes, sophisticated algorithms for uncovering and displaying personal identity and other cognitive structures, and structural equation modeling of naturalistic and laboratory data.

The Rutgers Social Psychology Program includes nationally and internationally recognized scholars, many of whom have received prestigious awards and honors.

For example, the Program boasts two American Psychological Association Early Career Award recipients (Gretchen Chapman, 1999, for Scientific Contribution to Applied Psychology and Lee Jussim, 1996, for Scientific Contribution to Social Psychology); a Senior Member of the National Academy of Sciences (Howard Leventhal); and a recipient of the Gordon Allport Prize for Research on Intergroup Relations (Laurie Rudman).

In addition, the Rutgers Social Psychology Program has a strong commitment to graduate and undergraduate teaching. In 2000, Richard Contrada received the Rutgers University Award for Outstanding Graduate Teaching and Mentoring. In 1998, Dan Ogilvie was named best undergraduate teacher at Rutgers by the 1998 Rutgers Students' Unofficial Guide to College. Laurie Rudman and Dan Ogilvie received Faculty of Arts and Sciences Teaching Awards in 2003.

The Program has strengths in two main areas:

1. Self, Interpersonal, and Intergroup Processes (Professors Aiello, Ashmore, Jussim, Rudman, Sanchez, & Wilder). One focus of research at Rutgers involves relations among self, interpersonal relations, and intergroup processes. Faculty interests include lay conceptions of personality; cognitive organization of multiple identities and social problems; development and use of categories to define the self and stereotypes to define others; prejudice; gender roles and beliefs, the integration of ideographic and nomothetic methodologies; role of feedback in self evaluation; the role of identity in intergroup perception and conflict; self-fulfilling prophecies; the role of nonverbal communication in the regulation of interpersonal interactions; managing workplace diversity; computer monitoring, telecommuting, and organizational change. Several members of the social faculty are associated with the Rutgers Center for Race and Ethnicity.

2. Health Psychology: (Professors Chapman & Leventhal). Faculty interests include effects of emotions and personality on cardiovascular and immune systems; coping with environmental threats; the perception of health risk; health promotion and preventive health behavior; management of chronic disease; effect of chronic illness on emotional reactions and the self concept; common sense reasoning and the representation of disease threats; judgment and decision making in medical and health domains, physician reasoning, and patient utility assessment. Social and Health students are part of a larger multidisciplinary group that draws upon members of the Clinical, Cognitive, and Behavioral Neuroscience Areas. Current research projects involve collaborative work with faculty in Medical Sociology, History of Medicine, Medical Economics, Medical Anthropology; the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research; The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; and the New Jersey Cancer Institute.