Resident Scholar
Baylor University, Psychology & Neuroscience
Email Wade Rowatt
Recent Publications
Wade C. Rowatt Vitae
Most of the research I conduct occurs at the interface between social psychology, personality psychology, and the psychology of religion. Most of my publications focus on humility, personality and prejudice, deception, or personal relationships.
My current research focuses on the measurement and potential benefits of humility relative to arrogance. My collaborators and I have developed and validated some measures of humility (Rowatt et al., 2006) and are using those measures to study a variety of social behaviors (e.g., helping, forgiveness). Generous funding for this line of research on the positive psychology of humility was provided by the John Templeton Foundation.
Much of my current research also focuses on the use of the Implicit Association Test to assess self-concept/personality (e.g., humility-arrogance, religiousness-spirituality) and romantic partner evaluation. Graduate and undergraduate students working with me are in the process of using the IAT to study religiosity/spirituality, relationship commitment and stability, and other constructs (e.g., body-image, optimism/pessimism).
My broader research interests include the psychology of religion and the study of personal relationships. For example, during the past few years my colleagues and I have been examining associations between personality and implicit prejudices (Rowatt et al., 2004, 2005, 2006), self-reported sexuality description (Rowatt & Schmitt, 2003), and attachment to God (Rowatt & Kirkpatrick, 2002).
My early research focused on the use of lying and other deceptive tactics people use to attract a date (Rowatt, Cunningham, & Druen, 1998, 1999), self-monitoring and mate preferences (Rowatt et al., 2001), and perceptions of brainstorming as an idea-generation technique (Rowatt et al., 1997).
