The Social & Personality Psychology Program blends rigorous, theory-driven science with concrete social impact. We use a mixed-methods approach to investigate topics ranging from health and well-being to social and political relationships. Our methodological, theoretical, and content diversity offers unique opportunities for close mentorship in labs and multiple forms of collaboration. Whether students seek career opportunities in academia or beyond, we train students to be impactful thinkers, empirical scientists, applied practitioners, and colleagues.

Here we list our core Program Values:

Connection and Collaboration

The Social & Personality Program values connection and collaboration between ideas, people, and places. We believe connecting diverse perspectives is key to discovery, innovation, and understanding the social mind. Our labs connect ideas, people, and places through collaboration within the program, other areas in the department, and with colleagues across the university beyond the psychology department. Peer mentoring forges meaningful connections among our graduate students, and both formal and informal mentoring connect graduate students with the faculty in our program. We connect to the broader community of Tucson and the Southwest by leading socially engaged and impactful research. And we connect across disciplinary silos because we adopt pluralistic research tools in our studies. These interdisciplinary connections across ideas, people, and places promote the cross-fertilization of theory, extending the social impact of our science.

Research That Matters

All members of our program from faculty to students and post-docs strive to do research that matters. We conduct basic and applied research in social and personality psychology that is rooted in everyday experience and issues of social justice, inclusion, and equity. Therefore, our work is relevant to people across our society and around the earth. Through our research we not only attempt to understand the social mind under controlled settings, but also to actively connect with “the real world” and the communities we work with. We lead community-engaged research aimed at understanding and improving domains that are relevant for people’s everyday experiences, including clinical, legal, and health outcomes. We consider the social impact of our work at all phases because it is crucial to understand why we do research in the first place, its relevance to society, and the potential long-term effects it may have on the people and the communities we study.

Holistic Mentorship

We strive to foster an atmosphere of respect, collegiality, and integrity which values all voices in the program. We achieve this, in part, by practicing holistic mentorship. For faculty, students, and post-docs in the program, this includes commitment to egalitarian participation and mentorship across and within positions. While we recognize that senior faculty may have more experience, we view all students and post-docs in our program as “colleagues in training.” Indeed, we recognize that early-career investigators and students offer unique perspectives that are essential to the values of connection, collaboration, and leading research that matters. As a program, we strive towards the growth and success of our students by being responsive and adaptive to possibly changing student needs and goals.

Updated: 09/03/25