Kevin Willcox

Biography	Kevin got his Master's in Psychological Science from Northern Arizona University. In his master's thesis, he investigated how a participant's generous behavior toward another person affected their impressions of that person. His doctoral research hopes to expand on this by using longitudinal and experimental methods to see if a person's behavior affects their impressions of others across interactions. Particularly, his longitudinal project looks at behavior and impressions throughout the day, and how a participant's behavior during one interaction affects their impressions of another person a few hours later. Importantly, he incorporates group membership as a potential moderator. His experimental project investigates similar phenomena but incorporates objective measures of behavior and their effect on another person's behavior.
Research Interests	Kevin is interested in the effects of prosocial behavior on social perception, cognition, and social systems. Particularly, he wonders how being kind changes the way we perceive other people and the world? Additionally, he is interested in how subtle effects of kindness in one situation may be transmitted to other situations by means of body language. These effects are likely to be intimately tied up with the identity of the actor and those they interact with. Therefore, notions of self (including social identity and group dynamics) are integral to Kevin's consideration of his topic. Other fields that are important for Kevin's research are cognitive dissonance, self-perception theory, assumed similarity bias, and expectancy effects. Supervisors: Patrick Kotzur Stefania Paolini Publications: Rumble, A.C., Willcox, K.J., Imada, H., & Yansen, D. (2022). Beyond Reciprocity: Forgiveness, Generosity and Punishment in Continuing Dyadic Social Dilemmas. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology. Imada, H., Hopthrow, T., Abrams, D., Willcox, K., Yansen, D., & Rumble, A. (2024), Intergroup Cooperation under Crossed Categorization. Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology.

Biography

Kevin got his Master's in Psychological Science from Northern Arizona University. In his master's thesis, he investigated how a participant's generous behavior toward another person affected their impressions of that person. His doctoral research hopes to expand on this by using longitudinal and experimental methods to see if a person's behavior affects their impressions of others across interactions.

Particularly, his longitudinal project looks at behavior and impressions throughout the day, and how a participant's behavior during one interaction affects their impressions of another person a few hours later. Importantly, he incorporates group membership as a potential moderator. His experimental project investigates similar phenomena but incorporates objective measures of behavior and their effect on another person's behavior.

Research Interests

Kevin is interested in the effects of prosocial behavior on social perception, cognition, and social systems. Particularly, he wonders how being kind changes the way we perceive other people and the world? Additionally, he is interested in how subtle effects of kindness in one situation may be transmitted to other situations by means of body language.

These effects are likely to be intimately tied up with the identity of the actor and those they interact with. Therefore, notions of self (including social identity and group dynamics) are integral to Kevin's consideration of his topic.

Other fields that are important for Kevin's research are cognitive dissonance, self-perception theory, assumed similarity bias, and expectancy effects.

Supervisors:
Patrick Kotzur
Stefania Paolini

Publications:

Rumble, A.C., Willcox, K.J., Imada, H., & Yansen, D. (2022). Beyond Reciprocity: Forgiveness, Generosity and Punishment in Continuing Dyadic Social Dilemmas. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology.

Imada, H., Hopthrow, T., Abrams, D., Willcox, K., Yansen, D., & Rumble, A. (2024), Intergroup Cooperation under Crossed Categorization. Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology.