People
Joseph Vandello
Professor
CONTACT
Office: PCD 4135
Phone: 813/974-0362
Email
| *I am interested in recruiting graduate students for the Fall of 2025. I welcome applications from students from diverse backgrounds. |
LINKS
BIO
Joe Vandello joined the faculty of the University of South Florida in 2002, after completing a 2-year postdoc at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2000, and his B.S. in Psychology from the University of Iowa in 1994. He is a social psychologist with interests in gender, culture, aggression, prejudice, morality, and status.
In 2014, with his colleague Jennifer Bosson, Joe won the Researcher of the Year Award from the American Psychological Association, Division 51 (Society for the Psychological Study of Men & Masculinity), for their collaborative research on precarious manhood. In 2015, he won the University of South Florida’s Jerome Krivanek Distinguished Teacher Award for undergraduate teaching.
RESEARCH
Research Interests
Manhood, work and family issues, LGBTQ+ issues, cultural psychology, conflict and violence, race, social perceptions of disadvantaged groups, morality and moral judgments
Research Synopsis
The fundamental question underlying much of my career’s work is: Why is gender often a source of anxiety?
This anxiety manifests in many ways. Men harbor anxiety about their status as men. People more generally worry that men are becoming less manly or that women are becoming less womanly. Men harbor anxiety about losing status as women gain more societal rights and status. People fret about gender nonconformers – transgender, nonbinary people or people who present themselves in ways that run counter to gendered expectations. Straight people sometimes worry about being mistaken as gay.
My work seeks to understand this anxiety and its implications for people’s behaviors: men’s risk-taking, aggression, and health, for instance, or the backlash and prejudice that gender nonconformers (feminine men, masculine women, transgender people) face.
Other long-standing research interests include cultural psychology, the psychology of underdogs, morality on the internet, prejudice, and political correctness.
SPECIALTY AREA
CNS (Social Psychology)