Jay Michaels

Background

About Jay Michaels

I am an experimental psychologist with expertise in social and quantitative psychology. I am dedicated to teaching excellence and critically examining how social cognition intersects the person-situation interaction through experimental and correlational research. I have an active research program centered on how cognitive, affective, and social factors dynamically interact to give rise to specific behavioral outcomes. For example, most recently I am applying a dynamic systems approach to understand how religious and spiritual beliefs interact with different forms of cognition to alter people's motivation, coping, and ultimately well-being. In the past, I have used this approach to study human conflict, personality as an emergent process, and even biological phenomena. Numerous students contribute to my research and develop projects of their own as a part of my lab activities; I am always excited to mentor motivated students and assist in their professional development. My teaching interests include: introductory psychology, research methods, statistics, social psychology, personality psychology, systems and theories of psychology (psychology history), and special topics such as dynamical psychology and psychology of religion. My teaching overlaps with some of my research, as I help guide students in their working with my various projects so that they can develop conference presentations and work with me on manuscripts as co-authors.