People
Joseph Vandello

Professor
CONTACT
Office: PCD 4135
Phone: 813/974-0362
Email
*I am interested in recruiting graduate students for the Fall of 2024. I welcome applications from students from diverse backgrounds. |
LINKS
BIO
Joe Vandello joined the faculty of the University of South Florida in 2002, after completing a 2-year postdoc at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2000, and his B.S. in Psychology from the University of Iowa in 1994. He is a social psychologist with interests in gender, culture, aggression, prejudice, morality, and status.
In 2014, with his colleague Jennifer Bosson, Joe won the Researcher of the Year Award from the American Psychological Association, Division 51 (Society for the Psychological Study of Men & Masculinity), for their collaborative research on precarious manhood. In 2015, he won the University of South Florida’s Jerome Krivanek Distinguished Teacher Award for undergraduate teaching.
RESEARCH
Research Interests
Manhood, work and family issues, LGBTQ+ issues, cultural psychology, conflict and violence, race, social perceptions of disadvantaged groups, morality and moral judgments
Research Synopsis
I am a social psychologist interested in gender and culture. Much of my research looks at how people understand manhood. My colleague Jennifer Bosson and I developed a theory of precarious manhood that seeks to understand how people see manhood as distinct from womanhood, and we look at the consequence of this thinking for understanding men’s aggression, risk-taking, health, relationships, sexual behavior, attitudes toward work and family, and attitudes toward sexual and gender minorities.
A recent focus of my research is understanding backlash toward marginalized groups, particularly transgender populations.
Other long-standing research interests include cultural psychology, the psychology of underdogs, morality on the internet, prejudice, and political correctness.
SPECIALTY AREA
CNS (Social Psychology)