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Faculty & Staff

John A. Edwards, Ph.D.

Chair
Associate Professor 
Department of Psychology
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331-5303
Phone: (541) 737-1370
Fax: (541) 737-3547
Email: http://oregonstate.edu/tools/mailform?to=jedwards@oregonstate.edu

Background

  • Dr. Edwards is a social psychologist specializing in social cognition and individual differences. He has received grants from the National Science Foundation, Consulting Psychologists Press, and the Department of Defense.
  • His general area of research concerns the motivational and personality factors that influence how people make judgments about other people. His specific areas of research concern:
    • causal uncertainty, or uncertainty about the causes of events (and related variables such as depression), and how it impacts social information processing.  Recent research extends this work into the health domain.
    • attributions about situations, with an emphasis on people’s understanding of the underlying qualities that people attribute to situations
    •  karma – examining whether behaving in a prosocial manner leads a person to see other people as also being prosocial.
    • “best practices” for communication of risk and probability information to people

Brief Vita

Education:

Ph.D.,  Ohio State University, Social Psychology

M.A., University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Industrial-Organizational Psychology

B.A., Davidson College, Psychology

Publications: Articles

  • Edwards, J. A., & Weary, G. (1993).  Depression and the impression formation continuum: Piecemeal processing despite the availability of category information.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 636-645.
  • Weary, G., & Edwards, J. A. (1994). Individual differences in causal uncertainty.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 308-318.
  • Weary, G., & Edwards, J. A, & Jacobson, J.  (1995).  Depression research methodologies in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: A reply.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 885-891.
  • Edwards, J. A.  (1998).  Effects of causal uncertainty on the dispositional attribution process.  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 34, 109-135.
  • Edwards, J. A., & Weary, G.  (1998).  Antecedents of causal uncertainty and perceived control: A prospective study. European Journal of Personality, 12, 135-148.
  • Edwards, J. A., Weary, G, & Reich, D. A.  (1998).  Causal Uncertainty: Factor structure and relation to the Big Five personality factors. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 451-462.
  • Jacobson, J. A., Weary, G., & Edwards, J. A.  (1999).  Certainty-related beliefs and depressive symptomatology:  Concurrent and longitudinal relationships.  Social Cognition, 17, 19-45.
  • Edwards, J. A., Weary, G., von Hippel, W., & Jacobson, J. A.  (2000).  Depression and impression formation:  The role of trait and category diagnosticity.  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 462-473.
  • Weary, G., Jacobson, J. A., Edwards, J. A., & Tobin, S.  (2001).  Chronic and temporarily activated causal uncertainty beliefs and stereotype usage.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 206-219.
  • Edwards, J. A., Lanning, K., & Hooker, K.  (2002).  The MBTI and social information
  • processing: An incremental validity study Journal of Personality Assessment, 78, 432-450.
  • Edwards, J. A.  (2003).  The interactive effects of processing preference and motivation on information processing: Causal uncertainty and the MBTI in a persuasion context.  Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 89-99.
  • Nelson, H. W., DeHart, K. N., Hooker, K., Lanning, K., & Edwards, J. A.  (2004).  The Volunteer Experience: Factors Important to Success in the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Role.  The Gerontologist, 44, 116-120.
  • Kumagai, Y., Daniels, S. E., Carroll, M. S., Bliss, J. C., & Edwards, J. A.  (2004).  Causal Reasoning Processes of People Affected by Wildfire: Implications for Agency-Community Interactions and Communication Strategies.  Western Journal of Applied Forestry, 3, 184-194.
  • Ryan, L. J., Henry, K., Robey, T., & Edwards, J. A.  (2004).  Resolution of conflicts between internal and external information sources on a time perception task: The role of perceived information reliability and attributional style.  Acta Psychologica, 117, 205-229.
  • Edwards, J. A., & Templeton, A.  (2005).  The structure of perceived attributes of situations.  European Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 705-723.
  • Kumagai, Y., Edwards, J. A., & Carroll, M.  (2006).  Why are natural disasters not "natural" for victims?: A conceptual framework addressing victims' attributions for the causes of natural disasters.  Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 26, 106-119.                    
  • Weary, G., Vaughn, L. A., Stewart, B. D., & Edwards, J. A. (2006). Adjusting for the correspondence bias: Effects of causal uncertainty, cognitive busyness, and causal strength of situational information. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 87-94.
  • Lanning, K., Colucci, J., & Edwards, J. A.  (2007).  Increased variability in ego development in the wake of September 11.  Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 197-202.
  • Edwards, J. A., & Collins, E.  (2008).  Evidence for the Big Five Personality Trait Structure in Memory Organization.  Personality and Individual Differences, 44, 1465-1473.
  • Edwards, J. A., Wichman, A., & Weary, G.  (in press).  Causal Uncertainty as a Chronically Accessible Construct.  European Journal of Social Psychology.