Category: Department Updates
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Azmitia contributes to APA report on promotion, tenure, and retention of Faculty of Color in psychology
Professor Margarita Azmitia contributed to the report of the APA’s Board of Scientific Affairs Task Force on Promotion, Tenure, and Retention of Faculty of Color in Psychology. Despite an increasingly diverse population, the representation of faculty of color in tenure-track and senior faculty positions remains disproportionately low. This report provides actionable recommendations for institutions to…
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Rogoff wins two awards and publishes article on her theoretical approach
Distinguished Professor Barbara Rogoff received two Lifetime Achievement Awards this spring: The Lifetime Contribution to Cultural Historical Research Award from AERA’s Cultural Historical Research SIG, and the Raymond Buriel Distinguished Leadership Award from SRCD’s Latinx Caucus. She published an invited article that highlights her theoretical approach and its development. This concept posits that learning and…
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Leaper co-authors article on family socialization and gender roles
With colleagues May Ling Halim and Brenda Gutierrez, Distinguished Professor Campbell Leaper conducted a study published in Sex Roles entitled, “Socialization of Gender Public Regard: Family Conversations, Practices and Routine.” An ethnically diverse sample of young adults were asked to write retrospective essays reflecting on their family socialization experiences. An inductive analysis of these narratives…
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Fox Tree co-authors articles on small talk, conversation quality, and pragmatics
Distinguished Professor Jean E. Fox Tree co-authored “Small talk in videoconferencing improves conversational experience and fosters relationships” with UCSC psychology alumni Andrew Guydish in Cognition and Emotion. The article explores how, while many people dislike videoconferencing, one thing that can make it better is allowing time for small talk. Participants in the researchers’ study engaged…
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Rogoff included in developmental psychology compendium, invited as guest speaker in Guatemala
In winter 2025, UCSC Foundation Distinguished Professor Barbara Rogoff was included in a compendium of leading figures in developmental psychology and asked to describe her career path and contributions. Last October, Rogoff was a guest speaker at the Universidad Rafael Landivar and at the Scientific Conference on Human Development in Antigua, Guatemala.
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Ph.D. candidate Elise Duffau co-authors article on voice assistant politeness
In winter 2025, Ph.D. candidate Elise Duffau co-authored the article “Expecting politeness: Perceptions of voice assistant politeness” in Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. For fifty years, politeness researchers claimed that some politeness forms show camaraderie (“Let’s go get lunch”) and some show distance (“If it’s not too much trouble, want to get lunch together?”). Researchers assessed how people…
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Hammack awarded grant from American Psychological Association to publish book on gender, sexuality, and relationships
In winter 2025, Professor Phil Hammack was awarded a small grant from Division 1 of the American Psychological Association (the Society for General Psychology) to support the completion of his forthcoming book, “Radical Authenticity: The Twenty-First Century Revolution in Gender, Sexuality, and Relationships” (contracted with Oxford University Press’ trade division). The book blends a review of…
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Ambivalent sexism linked to Mexican-heritage ethnic identity and gender messages from older relatives, familial peers, and nonfamilial peers
In winter 2025, Distinguished Professor Campbell Leaper co-published an article in the Journal of Latinx Psychology with former doctoral student Dr. Brenda Gutierrez, which examined the socialization of sexist attitudes among Mexican-heritage college youths. Endorsing sexism was less likely if both their cultural identity was important and their familial peers (e.g., cousins, siblings) had conveyed gender-egalitarian messages. Thus, same-aged relatives…
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Double dissociation of spontaneous alpha-band activity and pupil-linked arousal on additive and multiplicative perceptual gain
Assistant Professor Jason Samaha worked in collaboration with Ph.D. student April Pilipenko to publish this 2024 article in the Journal of Neuroscience, finding that synchronous brain waves in the alpha-band inhibit visual perception, regardless of the strength or presence of a stimulus, leading to false percepts. Simultaneously, changes in one’s pupil size boost perception for…
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The value of communal and intergenerational settings for studying social and emotional learning
Assistant Professor Saskias Casanova co-published this 2023 article with post-doctoral researcher Melissa Mesinas in Child Development Perspectives, providing nuanced perspectives to studying social and emotional learning (SEL) in Indigenous communal and familial contexts. It examines how the Indigenous value of comunalidad, a collaborative way of thinking to achieve collective well-being, and story-telling to pass down…
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Sexual and gender diversity in the 21st century
Professor Hammack published this 2023 article in the journal Current Opinion in Psychology, exploring how the 21st century has been a time of change in cultural attitudes, social policies, and scientific understandings of sexuality and gender. This article introduces a special issue focused on sexual and gender diversity, highlighting the need for new theories and…