Throughout my academic career, I have been pursuing issues within two broad areas of inquiry. One area is social influence and attitudes, including cognitive dissonance theory. I have been interested in the determinants and processes of social influence and attitude change in a range of situations, including mass media-like persuasion settings, personal feedback settings, and interpersonal settings. As well, my research has focused on several targets of influence and persuasion, including people's attitude positions on socio-political issues, their self-concepts, and their prejudice and stereotypes.
The second overarching area is psychology and law, especially what we might call eyewitness behavior. I have been exploring the accuracy and confidence of memory reports and, more recently, how they are received, interpreted, judged, and used by factfinders (e.g., jurors, police, clinical interviewers, etc.).