I am Benjamin Meagher, currently a visiting assistant research professor in the Department of Psychology at Hope College. I earned my Ph.D. and M.A. in social psychology at the University of Connecticut in 2014 and my B.A. in psychology from Gordon College in 2007. Prior to coming to Hope College in 2017, I was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Baylor University and taught in the Psychology Department at Franklin & Marshall College.

I conduct research in Environmental, Social, and Personality psychology. These distinct sub-disciplines, focusing respectively on the physical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal world, intercept in a variety of interesting ways. For example, some of the questions that I am currently investigating include:

• How do individual differences in belief, motivation, and personality lead to different impressions of the same physical environment?

• Can being in a particular type of physical environment help people perform, cope, or self-regulate in more effective ways?

• Do the social associations of particular objects (e.g., feminine or masculine products) inhibit or facilitate our ability to detect creative uses for them?

• In what way does the composition or diversity of a group or community–in terms of personality, attitudes, or virtues–impact the success or experience of individual members when they are together?

To learn more about the research projects that I am currently working on, or to find papers that I have published, please follow the links in the top menu.