Research Interests for Mark R. Leary

At the most general level, my interests are in social and personality psychology, centering around topics involving self-awareness, interpersonal motivation and emotion, and interfaces of social and clinical psychology. I have been particularly interested in how people's behavior and emotion are affected by (a) their concerns about others' impressions, evaluations, and acceptance of them and (b) the ways in which they talk to themselves in their own minds. In the first vein, we have been investigating the fundamental human need for acceptance and belonging, how people go about seeking acceptance, and the emotional and interpersonal consequences of feeling inadequately accepted. In the second vein, we are studying the negative effects of excessive ego-involvement on emotion, performance, and interpersonal behavior, and the efficacy of hypo-egoic states in which people's egos exert minimal influence on their thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

Keywords:

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, Adaptation, Psychological, Adolescent, Adult, Affect, Aging, Anxiety, Arthralgia, Attitude, Attitude to Health, Attitudes, Awareness, Character, Chronic Disease, Cognition, Comorbidity, Defense Mechanisms, Depression, Disabled Persons, Ego, emotion, Emotions, Empathy, Factor Analysis, Statistical, Feedback, Psychological, Female, Goals, Guilt, Health, Health Behavior, HIV Infections, Humans, Identification (Psychology), impression management, Individual differences, Individuality, Internal-External Control, Interpersonal Relations, Life Change Events, Male, Middle Aged, Models, Psychological, Mood Disorders, Motivation, North America, North Carolina, Obesity, Personal Autonomy, Personal Construct Theory, Personality, Personality Inventory, Politics, Prejudice, Prevalence, Problem Solving, Psychiatric Status Rating Scales, Psychological Tests, Psychological Theory, Psychometrics, Questionnaires, rejection, Rejection (Psychology), Reproducibility of Results, Research Design, Risk Assessment, Risk Factors, self, Self Concept, Self Efficacy, Self-Assessment, self-awareness, Self-regulation, Self-talk, Shame, Social Behavior, Social Control, Informal, Social Desirability, Social Identification, Social Perception, Stress, Psychological, Temperament, Thinking, Time Factors, Well-being, Young Adult

Recent Publications   (search)

1. Leary, MR, Intellectual Humility as a Route to More Accurate Knowledge, Better Decisions, and Less Conflict., American Journal of Health Promotion : Ajhp, vol. 36 no. 8 (November, 2022), pp. 1401-1404 [doi].
2. Erwin, SR; Liu, PJ; Datta, N; Nicholas, J; Rivera-Cancel, A; Leary, M; Chartrand, TL; Zucker, NL, Experiences of mimicry in eating disorders., Journal of Eating Disorders, vol. 10 no. 1 (July, 2022), pp. 103 [doi] [abs].
3. Rosenfeld, DL; Balcetis, E; Bastian, B; Berkman, ET; Bosson, JK; Brannon, TN; Burrow, AL; Cameron, CD; Chen, S; Cook, JE; Crandall, C; Davidai, S; Dhont, K; Eastwick, PW; Gaither, SE; Gangestad, SW; Gilovich, T; Gray, K; Haines, EL; Haselton, MG; Haslam, N; Hodson, G; Hogg, MA; Hornsey, MJ; Huo, YJ; Joel, S; Kachanoff, FJ; Kraft-Todd, G; Leary, MR; Ledgerwood, A; Lee, RT; Loughnan, S; MacInnis, CC; Mann, T; Murray, DR; Parkinson, C; Pérez, EO; Pyszczynski, T; Ratner, K; Rothgerber, H; Rounds, JD; Schaller, M; Silver, RC; Spellman, BA; Strohminger, N; Swim, JK; Thoemmes, F; Urganci, B; Vandello, JA; Volz, S; Zayas, V; Tomiyama, AJ, Psychological Science in the Wake of COVID-19: Social, Methodological, and Metascientific Considerations., Perspectives on Psychological Science : a Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, vol. 17 no. 2 (March, 2022), pp. 311-333 [doi] [abs].
4. Allen, K-A; Gray, DL; Baumeister, RF; Leary, MR, The Need to Belong: a Deep Dive into the Origins, Implications, and Future of a Foundational Construct., Educational Psychology Review, vol. 34 no. 2 (January, 2022), pp. 1133-1156 [doi] [abs].
5. Leary, MR; Gabriel, S, The relentless pursuit of acceptance and belonging, in Advances in Motivation Science, vol. 9 (January, 2022), pp. 135-178 [doi] [abs].