Dr. Dale Jorgenson

Professor
Department of Psychology
California State University, Long Beach

Office Rm PSY 317
Phone/Voicemail (562) 985-5032
djorgens@csulb.edu

Education

Education:

Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1970
Social/Organizational Psychology
(Minor: Statistics/Measurement)
B.A., University of Minnesota, 1966
Psychology
(Minor: Economics)

Research:

While I maintain some level of involvement in a number of different research projects, my recent primary research activity has been on the affective, interpersonal and social influence effects of smiling. A continuing aspect of this work has been the investigation of the effects of interethnic smiling on relations between ethnic groups. This research has the objective of validating the reciprocation of initiated smiles as an attitudinal index which could be used to assess intergroup attitudes. I have collected data from approximately 250,000 subjects in southern California since before the LA riots in 1992 and will be presenting the results of this work at an upcoming convention of the Western Psychological Association. I am also continuing work on the mitigating effects of smiling on aggression by examining the roles of smiler and target gender as well as the attractiveness of the smiler as mediators of this relationship.

Currently, I am examining temporal changes in the incidence of spontaneous smiling as an expression of affective state among students on campus for purposes of determining whether this shows evidence of a decline over the course of the semester in response to their workload demands. This has also involved the administration of self-report measures of anxiety, school-related stress and energy level for purposes of looking for correlations between changes in the overall incidence of smiling on campus and changes in self-reported stress and energy. This will be useful both from the standpoint of validating the use of observed spontaneous smiling rates as an index of negative affective states but also will reveal something about the overall pattern of negative effects of student experiences over the course of a semester, experiences which may have some implications for educational outcomes as well.

I am also conducting research on the contagion of smiling. Specifically, I have been examining the effects of exposing even very large subject populations to intensive smiling on the likelihood that they will be influenced to increase their tendency to smile at others.

Publications:

List of Publications

List of Professional Presentations

Affiliations:

Professional Memberships: American Psychological Association; American Psychological Society
Western Psychological Association
Southeastern Psychological Association
Rocky Mountain Psychological Association
Midwestern Psychological Association
Honorary Societies: Psi Chi
Phi Beta Kappa

Other Interests:

Photography, skiing, mountaineering, biking.