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Graduate Student Research and Facilities

The department adopts a mentorship model of graduate education in which students work closely with a faculty advisor during their two years in our program.  Typically there is a 2:1 graduate student:faculty ratio that provides the student with individualized attention and, therefore, superior training.  Students conduct both a first year research project and a thesis.

We admit students into the program rather than to work with individual faculty members. Nonetheless, we do our best to match students with their preferred advisor whenever possible, and thus having a good match with one or two faculty members is an important part of the admission decision.  Thus, we encourage you to highlight at least one or two professors who might be good matches to your interests.  If your interests are still broad, that’s fine, but provide us with some indication of the type of research you are interested in doing.

Most faculty begin working with one new student each year; however, the faculty available to take new students in their lab varies from year to year for various reasons (e.g., sabbaticals, number of openings in a lab, etc.). You are welcome to contact a faculty member to see if she or he anticipates taking a student – please see the department’s faculty web page for research interests and contact information.

Follow this link to view a list of completed Thesis projects.

Recent Publications

Note that the list below is not an exhaustive list of recent publications that our grad students have co-authored based on work done at Wake Forest.

Austin, K. D., *Crawley, H. K., Fleeson, W., & Furr, R. M. (In press). Using generative artificial intelligence to advance hypothesis-driven scale validation: Identifying criterion measures and generating precise a priori hypotheses. Assessment.

*Crawley, H. K., Jayawickreme, E., & Furr, R. M. (In press). Moral character: A personality perspective on morality. In D. Lapsley & J. Gibbs (Eds.) Research Handbook on Lifespan Moral Development. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Furr, R. M., Waugh, C. E., *Good, R. N., Ye, C., Li, J., Miller, C. B., Cole, J., & Porth, A. (In press). Patience and Patience Regulation: Development and Psychometric Evaluation of Complementary Scales with Alternate Forms. Journal of Personality Assessment. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2026.2621759

*Kemmerly, R., Parker, A. M., *Somerville, A. H., & Stone, E. R.  (In press).  Examining Potential Behavioral and Psychological Consequences of Unjustified Confidence in Knowledge and in Forecasting. Judgment and Decision Making.  https://doi.org/10.1017/jdm.2026.10040

*Nixon, B., Guajardo, N., & Kiang, L. (in press).Bubble bias: Impact of mimicry, texting style, and phone type on perceived likability in text message communications of iPhone users. Communication Reports. https://doi.org/10.1080/08934215.2025.2603202

Reynolds, C. J., Jayawickreme, E., *Wheat, R., Stokes, E., *Santos, C., Fleeson, W., & Furr, R.M. (In press). Honesty as truthfulness: New trait and state measures of truthfulness to advance research and theorizing on when and why people are honest. European Journal of Personality. https://doi.org/10.1177/08902070251338199 

*Grant, A.I., Furr, R.M., & Jayawickreme, E. (2026). Assessing the Response Process Validity of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory Using Cognitive Interviews. Journal of Personality Assessment.

Jayawickreme, E., *Dixon, S.G., Tiberius, V., Tekinbaş, K., & Schueller, S.M. (2026). Fostering Volitional Moral Personality Change Through Online Micro-Interventions: Integrating Personality Dynamics with Digital Mental Health Approaches. American Psychologist.

*Li, C., & Kiang, L. (2026). You are not one of us: The consequences of ingroup versus outgroup prejudice on Asian Americans. Asian American Journal of Psychology, 17, 170-180.

*Selected as APA’s Editor’s Choice recognition. https://doi.org/10.1037/aap0000406

*Liu, Y. R., Leo, M.B., McRae, K., & Waugh, C.E. (in press). Shared and unique neural correlates of reappraisal generation and implementation. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience. 

*Nathan, J., Boals, A., & Jayawickreme, E. (2026). Investigating corroboration 4on the Stress-Related Growth Scale-Revised among romantic partners. Journal of Research in Personality, 104692.

Petrocelli, J. V., Rice, E. N., & *Curran, J. M. (2026). When fools have greater influence than liars: Testing the insidious bullshit hypothesis with the illusory truth effect. Current Psychology, 45, Article 1140. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-026-09668-4

Stein, G. L., Coard, S. I., Kiang, L., Lobo, F. M., & *Chan, M. (2026). Helping parents talking through the tough: Parental ethnic and racial socialization interventions. In T. Yip (Ed). The Cambridge Handbook of Ethnic and Racial Discrimination and Youth Development (pp. 501-522). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 

*Hayes, B. B., & Stone, E. R. (2025).  Effects of descriptive information on mental representations of probability and future behavior in the context of personal experience. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 38(4), e70044.   https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.70044

*Lyu, X., Hunter, M. D., Burt, S. A., *Good, R., Carroll, S. L., & Garrison, S. (2025). Detecting mtDNA Effects with an Extended Pedigree Model: An Analysis of Statistical Power and Estimation Bias. Behavior genetics, 55(4), 320–337. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-025-10225-1

NOTE: this paper was awarded the Editors’ Choice Award, given for the most outstanding paper published in the previous year in the journal Behavior Genetics. https://bga.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=971921&module_id=567677

Parker, A. M., *Somerville, A. H., *Kemmerly, R., & Stone, E. R. (2025). Psychological and behavioral consequences of confidence in knowledge: An exploratory examination of general public and JDM researcher perspectives. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.70023

Soland, J., Cole, V., Tavares, S., & *Zhang, Q. (2025). Evidence That Growth Mixture Model Results Are Highly Sensitive to Scoring Decisions. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 60(3), 487–508. https://doi.org/10.1080/00273171.2024.2444955

Waugh, C.E., Schieber, M.*, Zhao, Y.^ (2025). Feeling good about the bad: Making positive appraisals of predominantly negative stressors. Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001517(opens in a new tab)

Facilities

In Fall of 1999 the department occupied over 30,000 feet of space for offices, classrooms, and labs in Greene Hall, a brand new beautiful and high tech classroom building. Space in Winston Hall was also renovated for animal research. There is generous office and lounge space for students, as well as considerable technology and other resources specific to the needs of the individual labs.