Faculty Member - Experimental Psychology

Darcy Reich

Position:

Associate Professor of Psychology

Education:

Ph.D., 2000, Ohio State University

Contact:

Phone: 806-742-3711 x237

Fax: 806-742-0818

Email: darcy.reich@ttu.edu

Research interests:

My primary research interests concern the ways in which expectancies, goals, naïve theories, and other accessible thoughts influence our social judgments and interpersonal behaviors, often without awareness. I’m also interested in the processes by which people correct their social judgments and behaviors to overcome the influence of biasing factors. With colleagues and students, I am currently examining questions related to nonconscious mimicry, self-fulfilling prophecies, and the influence of regulatory focus and of the ovulatory cycle on social perceptions and behaviors.

Selected Research:

• Randolph-Seng, B., Reich, D.A., & DeMarree, K.G. (2012). On the nonconscious antecedents of social identification: Ingroup salience, outgroup salience, or both? Social Cognition, 30, 335-349.
• Reich, D. A., & Arkin, R. A. (2010). Perceived evaluative styles and self-doubt. In R. M. Arkin, K. C. Oleson, & P. J. Carroll (Eds.), Handbook of the uncertain self (pp. 303-318). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
• Casa de Calvo, M. P., & Reich, D. A. (2009). Detecting perceiver expectancies: The role of perceiver distraction in spontaneously triggering identity negotiation. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 31, 174-187.
• Reich, D. A., & Mather, R. D. (2008). Busy perceivers and ineffective suppression goals: A critical role for distracter thoughts. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 706-718.
• Casa de Calvo, M. P., & Reich, D. A. (2007). Spontaneous correction in the behavioral confirmation process: The role of naturally-occurring variations in self-regulatory resources. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 29, 351-364.
• Reich, D. A., Green, M. C., Brock, T. C., & Tetlock, P. E. (2007). Biases in research evaluation: Inflated assessment, oversight, or error-type weighting. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 633-640.
  
• Wichman, A. L., Reich, D. A., & Weary, G. (2006). Perceived likelihood as a measure of optimism and pessimism: Support for the Future Events Scale. Psychological Assessment, 18, 215-219.
  
• Reich, D. A. & Arkin, R. A. (2006). Self-doubt, attributions, and the perceived implicit theories of others. Self and Identity, 5, 89-109.
  
• Reich, D. A. (2004). What you expect isn't always what you get: The roles of extremity, optimism, and pessimism in the behavioral confirmation process. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 119-215.
  
• Reich, D. A. & Weary, G. (1998). Depressives' future-event schemas and the social inference process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1133-1145.
  
• Weary, G., Reich, D. A., & Tobin, S. J. (2001). Constraints on behavior categorization: The role of chronic expectancies in the dispositional inference process. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 62-75.
  
• Weary, G. & Reich, D. A. (2001). Attributional effects of conflicting chronic and temporary outcome expectancies: A case of automatic comparison and contrast. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 562-574.
  
• Weary, G., Tobin, S. J., & Reich, D. A. (2001). Chronic and temporary distinctive expectancies as comparison standards: Automatic contrast in dispositional judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 365-380.
  
• Edwards, J. A., Weary, G., & Reich, D. A. (1998). Causal uncertainty: Factor structure and relation to the Big Five personality factors. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 451-462.
  

Teaching Interests and Activities:

At the graduate level, I teach Research Methods in Social Psychology, Automaticity and Control in Social Behavior, and Advanced Correlational Methods and Factor Analysis. At the undergraduate level, I teach Social Psychology and Research Methods.

Research Support:

Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT)
Health Care Professional Education and Training Award
Implementation of the Clinical Practice Guidelines for Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence in Oncology and Primary Care Settings
Principal Investigators: Lee M. Cohen & Susan Hendrick
Co-Investigators: Everardo Cobos, Betsy Jones, Cynthia Jumper, R. Michael Ragain, Darcy Reich
Proposed Funding Dates: March 2011 - February 2013
Total Direct Costs: $299,306

Student Research Projects:

Utilizing social cognitive and evolutionary approaches, Dr. Reich’s Interpersonal Processes Lab explores the factors that influence social judgments and dyadic behaviors, how those judgments and behaviors come about, and the consequences of such processes.

Doctoral Students

K. Rachelle Smith: My research primarily focuses on nonconscious behavioral mimicry, although I’m also interested in self-theories, perspective-taking, and evolutionary psychology. I am exploring how and when mimicry may lead to negative consequences and how mimicry may be used strategically in the pursuit of affiliation-related goals. Using a dynamical systems framework, I am investigating individual differences in the patterns of initiations and reciprocations of gestures within a dyad.

J. Adam Randell: My research interests revolve around motivation and goal pursuit. I focus on the consequences of motivational states (e.g., regulatory focus) on social cognition (e.g., priming effects, processing styles), goal pursuit (e.g., suppression goals) and social perception (e.g., social judgments, or attractiveness ratings). I approach these topics with a social cognitive and evolutionary perspective.

Ashalee C. Hurst: My research focuses on factors that influence or bias social judgments. Specifically, I am interested in women’s perceptions of men’s attractiveness and how those perceptions change throughout the ovulatory cycle. I use an evolutionary approach to investigate the functional role of automatic, social judgments (i.e., biases that may have served an adaptive function in our ancestral past).

Jenna Chang: As new member to the lab, I’m interested in conducting research on how emotions during social interactions--what people feel as well as what they perceive their interaction partner to be feeling--may influence or predict subsequent social behaviors or judgments. Another area of interest involves ideal affect ("what I want to feel") and actual affect ("what I ended up feeling") as they might influence goal pursuit.