Linda J. Skitka
LINDA J. SKITKA is a professor and the associate head of psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research interests bridge a number of areas of inquiry including social, political, and moral psychology. Her publications cover topics such as how people experience morality in their everyday lives, the psychological foundations and consequences of moral conviction, how attitudes rooted in moral convictions differ in consequence and kind from otherwise strong but non-moral attitudes, the psychological underpinnings of the left-right political divide, political intolerance, reactions to terrorism, how people reason about justice, and automation bias. Dr. Skitka’s research has been supported by numerous research grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Dr. Skitka is currently an associate editor for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition, and a consulting editor for Psychological Science, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Political Psychology, Social Justice Research, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, and several other journals. She is the Chairperson of the Consortium for Social Psychological and Personality Science, a joint venture of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, the Association for Research in Personality, the European Society for Social Psychology, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, created to launch the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, now the major short reports journal for social and personality psychology. In addition to these current service activities, she is the past president of the International Society for Justice Research, and current executive committee member of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology.
Primary Interests:
- Attitudes and Beliefs
- Causal Attribution
- Ethics and Morality
- Political Psychology
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Behavior Is Worth 1,000 Words
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1:08:28 Behavior Is Worth 1,000 Words
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1:02:05 The Social and Political Consequences of Moral Conviction
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31:52 Exploring Whether Identity Expressions Forms the Basis of Moral Conviction
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Journal Articles:
- Aramovich, N. P., Lytle, B. L., & Skitka, L. J. (2012). Opposing torture: Moral conviction and resistance to majority influence. Social Influence, 7, 21-34.
- Gollwitzer, M., Skitka, L, J., Wisneski, D., Sjöström, A., Liberman, P., Nazi, S. J., & Bushman, B. J. (2014). Vicarious revenge and the death of Osama bin Laden. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. DOI: 10.1177/0146167214521466
- Morgan, G. S., Mullen, E., & Skitka, L. J. (2010). When values and attributions collide: Liberals' and conservatives' values motivate attributions for alleged misdeeds. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 1241-1254.
- Mullen, E., & Skitka, L. J. (2006). Exploring the psychological underpinnings of the moral mandate effect: Motivated reasoning, group differentiation, or anger? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 629-643.
- Reifen Tagar, M., Morgan, G. S., Skitka, L., & Halperin, E. (2013). Moral conviction in the context of protracted intergroup conflict: When ideology matters in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. European Journal of Social Psychology. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.1993.
- Skitka, L. J. (2010). The psychology of moral conviction. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4, 267-281.
- Skitka, L. J., & Bauman, C. W. (2008). Moral conviction and political engagement. Political Psychology, 29, 29-54.
- Skitka, L. J., Bauman, C. W., & Lytle, B. L. (2009). Limits on legitimacy: Moral and religious convictions as constraints on deference to authority. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 567-578.
- Skitka, L. J., Bauman, C. W., & Sargis, E. G. (2005). Moral conviction: Another contributor to attitude strength or something more? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 895-917.
- Skitka, L. J. & Morgan, G. S. (2014). The social and political implications of moral conviction. In H. Lavine (Ed.), Advances in Political Psychology, 35, 95 – 110.
- Skitka, L. J., & Mullen, E. (2008). Moral convictions often override concerns about procedural fairness: A reply to Napier and Tyler. Social Justice Research, 21 529-546.
- Skitka, L. J., Mullen, E., Griffin, T., Hutchinson, S., & Chamberlin, B. (2002). Dispositions, scripts, or motivated correction? Understanding ideological differences in explanations for social problems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 470-487.
- Washburn, A. & Skitka, L. J. (2014). Motivated and displaced revenge: Remembering 9/11 suppresses opposition to military intervention in Syria (for some). Analyses of Social and Public Policy.
- Wisneski, D. C., Lytle, B. L., & Skitka, L. J. (2009). Gut reactions: Moral conviction, religiosity, and trust in authority. Psychological Science, 20, 1059-1063.
Other Publications:
- Sargis, E. G., Skitka, L. J., & McKeever, W. (2013). The Internet as psychological laboratory revisited: Best practices, challenges, and solutions. In Y. Amichai-Hamburger (Ed.), The social net: The social psychology of the Internet (2nd Ed., pp. 253 – 270). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
- Skitka, L. J. (2014). The psychological foundations of moral conviction. In J. Wright & H. Sarkissian (Eds.), Advances in Moral Psychology, Bloomsbury Academic Press (pp. 148 - 166), New York, NY.
- Skitka, L. J., Morgan, G. S., & Wisneski, D. C. (in press). Political orientation and moral conviction: A conservative advantage or an equal opportunity motivator of political engagement? In J. Forgas, W. Crano, & K. Fiedler (Eds.) Social psychology and politics. New York: Psychology Press.
Courses Taught:
- Advanced Statistics
- Computing in Psychology
- Psychological Perspectives on Justice
- Research Design and Analysis I (Advanced ANOVA)
- Research Design and Analysis II (Multivariate Statistics)
- Social Psychological Research Methods
- Social Psychology
Linda J. Skitka
Department of Psychology (M/C 285)
University of Illinois at Chicago
1007 West Harrison Street
Chicago, Illinois 60607-7137
United States of America
- Phone: (312) 996-4464
- Fax: (312) 413-4122