Your July 2025 reads
This month’s featured titles include a look at the world’s first advice column, self-help for parents, and a scholarly book on Venezuela.
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The dominant strengths of the department lie in four broadly defined areas of development, cognition, neuroscience, and social and personality psychology.
Cornell offers substantial resources for psychological research, including excellent research space and laboratory equipment; state-of-the-art computer facilities; an outstanding library system that is one of the ten largest academic research libraries in North America; and a highly skilled support staff
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Our group of scientists and scholars celebrate a well integrated faculty with core foci and strengths. We also aim to expand current strengths and build new concentrations to enhance collaborations both within the department and across the University and world. Our faculty works collaboratively at the whole-department level, respecting the specialties of current mid-career and junior faculty to forge the direction for the next 5, 10, and 25 years.
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Psychology News
Psychology Faculty win 2025 SUNY Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence
Psychology faculty members Felix Thoemmes and Karl Pillemer were selected for 2024–25 State University of New York (SUNY) Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence.
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Why are lefties more creative? Turns out, they’re not
“The data do not support any advantage in creative thinking for lefties,” said Daniel Casasanto, associate professor in the Department of Psychology and College of Human Ecology, and director of the Experience and Cognition Lab. “In fact, there is some evidence that righties are more creative in som...
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Where the gender bias grows: Coming-of-age novels rife with stereotypes
An article published June 7, 2025, in the Journal of Research on Adolescence by researchers including Department of Psychology faculty Jane Mendel and Misha Inniss-Thompson, highlighted the issue of rigid gender stereotypes in novels aimed at young adults. The Cornell researchers used computational...
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Conspiracy theorists unaware their beliefs are on the fringe
Overconfidence is a hallmark trait of people who believe in conspiracies, Cornell psychology researchers have found.
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Emotion – not just action – helps brain define, divide events
Study participants who watched scenes from popular movies showed emotion plays a larger role than previously understood in establishing event boundaries that help structure attention and memory.
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Why our attempts to avoid emotional discomfort often backfire
"As a clinical psychologist, I’ve learned that moments of anxiety can be golden opportunities to learn to tolerate distress," A&S psychology major Alissa Worly Jerud ’08 writes.
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Staff graduates recognized for academic achievements
More than two dozen staff members who earned degrees at Cornell or other institutions this year while also working at the university were celebrated in a ceremony June 10.
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