Social Psychology in the Information Age: Some things I expect to happen this year

Saturday, January 14, 2017

Some things I expect to happen this year

This is just an off the cuff list of items I expect will get accomplished:

1. The manuscript on the weapons effect that is currently in revise-resubmit mode will hopefully get accepted for publication. If not where it is currently being reviewed, then at another relevant journal.

2. A paper on attitudes toward torture based on a presentation I and Sara Oelke gave at the last George Gerbner Conference was accepted some time ago by a Hungarian journal (KMG). I still have no idea as to when it will be in print. Should have been last year, so perhaps this year?

3. Brad Bushman and I will be coauthoring a review of recent weapons effect research for an upcoming special issue on aggression and violence in Current Opinion in Psychology. That will be the second article I will have coauthored in that particular journal.

4. Several data sets that I have worked on with students will finally get written up and submitted to various journals. My guess is most of that work will happen over the summer. Hopefully a few of those will be in press by year's end.

5. Depending on timing, an encyclopedic entry on the Type A/B Personality will make its way into print. If not late this year, then certainly in 2018.

That's the short list. Keep in mind that these activities occur in a context in which I normally carry a 12 hour (four course) teaching load per semester, without any TA to help with grading, and a 50 student advising load. Also keep in mind that I often do overload either with my current full time employer or as an adjunct at a nearby community college. So usually I am teaching 15 hours many semesters. Last semester, I taught 18 hours. There is a reality regarding faculty pay that I have been dealing with for a long time. That is another story for another time. I do have some committees that I sit on, and those tend to take some time as well. And I do some freelance work on the CLEP Psych exam as well as serve as an AP Reader for the Introductory Psych exam that high school students take for college credit. So, my research identity is one that is maintained on a sometimes very tenuous basis, and one should expect that I typically have a very full plate.

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About

Hi! I am A. James Benjamin, Jr., PhD. Most folks call me James or JB eventually.

I am an educator trained as a social psychologist. I work as an Associate Professor at University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. I earned my PhD from University of Missouri-Columbia in 2000. Much of my research has touched on cognitive and behavioral effects of aggression-related cues (e.g., video games and weapon images), increasingly from a critical and skeptical perspective. I have also examined person variables such as authoritarianism and short-term media exposure in relation to attitudes toward violence and toward torture. My more recent interests involve the psychometric properties of various measures of aggressive cognition that are commonly used by aggression researchers. My work intersects with that of related researchers in areas such as Media Communication.

As an educator, I primarily teach methodology courses and the undergraduate survey course in social psychology. I also regularly teach the introductory psychology course. I make a point of introducing students at all levels to the replication crisis. Increasingly, I am trying interactive activities to engage students to become more critical readers of the research literature in my field.

I use this blog to express my own professional and personal perspectives. This blog is completely independent of any organizations with which I am affiliated. Assume that the views I express here are exclusively mine and do not reflect the views of any employer.