Biography

I studied Psychology at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, and at Stanford University in California, and I worked at the City University of New York (1999-2001) and Yale University (2001-2002), prior to joining the University of Surrey in 2002. I was a Visiting Professor in Psychology and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan in 2006.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE

• Board Member of the Centre for Lesbian and Gay Studies in New York (2001-2002).
• Committee Chair of the British Psychological Society’s Section for Lesbian and Gay Psychology (2004-2006).  (Now the Psychology of Sexualities Section).
• Guest Editor of retrospective on the work of Anne Constantinople (with Adrian Coyle, 2005).  Feminism & Psychology.
•  Associate Editor. British Journal of Social Psychology. (2006-2008).
• Guest Editor of Special Issue "Power Matters: Knowledge Politics in the History of Psychology."  History of Psychology. (2007).
• Teacher at the European Association of Social Psychology Summer School (2008). 
• Co-convenor of the University of Michigan’s International LGBT Psychology Summer Institute (2008, 2010).  
• Current Treasurer of the History and Philosophy of Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society.
• Guest Editor of Special Issue "Queer Theory and Psychology" (with Meg Barker and Darren Langdridge). Psychology & Sexuality (2011).

FEATURED LINKS

• Consultant: British Psychological Society Project Origins: The Evolution and Impact of Psychological Science. 
• Contributing author: British Psychological Society Guidelines and Literature Review for Psychologists Working Therapeutically with Sexual and Gender Minority Clients.
• "Are lads mags and rapists talking the same language?"  You Tube video.  Download the article on the language of lads mags and convicted rapists from the British Journal of Psychology here.
•  "Seeing and Believing" YouTube Video about the Rorschach Test and Graphing Practices.
• "The name game."  Interview on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme about research on couple name order, March 15th, 2009.
• Featured "Key Researcher" in the textbook Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer Psychology: An Introduction (2010).
• Invited participant in the retreat leading to the publication of the 2011 report: The Future of Undergraduate Psychology in the United Kingdom.  University of York: Higher Education Academy
• Contributing Author to the British Psychological Society's Professional Practice Board's 2012 Guidelines and Literature Review for Psychologists Working Therapeutically with Sexual and Gender Minority Clients.

PHD STUDENTS

• Afrodita Marcu. Dehumanization of ethnic groups in Britain and Romania: Socio-cognitive and ideological aspects. (2007).
• Toni Brennan. Charlotte Wolff: Then and now. (2009).
• Dan Shepperd Friendships between gay men and heterosexual women: Discourse analytic studies. (2010).
• Orla Parslow Experiences of lesbians involved in elder care.
• Y. Gavi Ansara Cisgenderisms: A bricolage approach to studying ideology about people with self-designated genders.
  • Winner of the 2011 National Psychology Postgraduate Teaching Award
• Freyja Quick. The inequitable evaluation of scientific research: Implications for minority research and the scientists who conduct it.
• Sebastian Bartos.

Research Interests

My research clusters around three overlapping areas; Social Psychology, History of Psychology and LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) Psychology. In these areas, I research relationships between social identities that are marked by power (particularly sexual and gender identities) and modern psychological thought. Using controlled experiments, surveys, bibliometrics, content and discourse analyses, I examine how scientists and laypeople draw, graph, explain and generalize about real social groups. This work aims to inform both social psychological understanding of the relationship between scientific thinking and intergroup relations, and historical thinking about the production of psychological "truth" in the modern world.  

RECENT RESEARCH FINDINGS

Predictions of scientific impact in psychology using journal impact factors are biased in favor of natural science approaches, and  in favor of male authors.

Hegarty, P., & Walton, Z. (2012).  The consequences of predicting scientific impact in psychology with journal impact factors.  Perspectives on Psychological Science 7, 72-78.

Gender stereotypes lead women to be the ‘second sex’ in graphs and English language sentences

Hegarty, P., Lemieux, A., & McQueen, G. (2010). Graphing the order of the sexes: Constructing, recalling, interpreting, and putting the self in gender difference graphs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 375-391.

Defining sexual identity as a biological trait is unlikely to reduce heterosexual people’s prejudice towards lesbians and gay men

Hegarty, P. (2010).  A stone in the soup?  Changes in sexual prejudice and essentialist beliefs among British students in a class on LGBT psychology.  Psychology and Sexuality, 1, 3-20.

Hegarty, P. & Golden, A.M. (2008). Attributions about the controllability of stigmatized traits: Antecedents or justifications of prejudice? Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38, 1023-1044.

Hegarty, P. (2002). "It's not a choice, it's the way we're built:" Symbolic beliefs about sexual orientation in the United States and in Britain. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 12, 1-14.

Implicit ideals about who is "normal" affect explanations of statistical differences between groups of unequal power, with consequences for stereotyping.

Bruckmüller, S., Hegarty, P., & Abele, A. (2012).  Framing gender differences: Linguistic normativity affects perceptions of power and gender stereotypes.  European Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 210-218.

Hegarty, P. & Buechel, C. (2006).  Androcentric reporting of gender differences in APA articles, 1965-2004.  Review of General Psychology, 10, 377-389.

Hegarty, P., & Pratto, F. (2004). The differences that norms make: Empiricism, social constructionism and the interpretation of group differences. Sex Roles, 50, 445-453.

Hegarty, P., & Pratto, F. (2001). The effects of category norms and stereotypes on explanations of intergroup differences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 723-735.

Psychological definitions of “intelligence”  are invested in conservative sexual morality.

Hegarty, P. (2011).  Sexuality, normality, intelligence.  What is queer theory up against?  
Psychology and Sexuality, 2, 45-57.

Hegarty, P. (2007).  From genius inverts to gendered intelligence: Lewis Terman and the
power of the norm.  History of Psychology, 10, 132-155.

Publications

Teaching

Modules Convened:

Psy1015: Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology (First Year Lecture Course)

Psy3035/PsyM061: History of Psychology (Final Year Undergraduate and MSc Seminar Course)
Psy3036/ PsyM062: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Psychology (Final Year Seminar Course)

PsyM028: Crafting Research (MSc seminar)

Dissertation Supervision

I supervise dissertation research in the area of experimental social psychology, particularly the areas of stereotyping, prejudice, attribution, essentialism, and scientific thinking.

Mentoring and Professional Activity in Teaching and Learning

Participant in the Higher Education Academy, British Psychological Society and Heads of Psychology Departments Joint Meeting on the Future of Undergraduate Psychology Education.  (November 2010). 

Presenter at the one day seminar "Teaching Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology." Higher Education Academy, University of York (2008).

Winner of University of Surrey’s Learning and Teaching Award for Experienced Staff (2006).

Extras

Conference Presentations

(First and Sole Author Presentations Only)

Hegarty, P. (2009). Successor to Darwin: Of wasps and homosexuals, the lovable monsters of the Western frontier. Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the History and Philosophy of Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. Edinburgh, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2009). Teaching Freud. Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the British Psychological Society. Brighton, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2008). Can biology make the United States gay-friendly? The social constructionist alternative to attribution theory. Annual Meetings of the International Society for Political Psychology. Paris, France.

Hegarty, P. (2008). Bugging the moderns with Kinsey’s sexology. ‘3 Societies 2008’ Meetings of the British Society for the History of Science. Oxford, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2008). Gentlemen first? Graphing the order of the sexes. ESCON Expert Meeting. Venice, Italy.

Hegarty, P. (2008). The facts of life: Lewis Terman, Alfred Kinsey and the debate that made sex unsmart. Paper presented at the small group meeting ‘Sexuality and the construction of the social sciences.’ Department of History, Yale University, USA.

Hegarty, P. (2008). How did we all become normal? Meetings of the Social Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. Royal Dublin Society, Ireland.

Hegarty, P., & A.F. Lemieux (2008). Graph men first because they are more normal. Meetings of the Social Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. Royal Dublin Society, Ireland.

Hegarty, P. (2008). Why doesn’t the gifted adolescent masturbate? Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the History and Philosophy of Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. Oxford, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2007). Explaining the ‘other’ of group differences. Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the Social Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. University of Kent, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2007). Lewis Terman, Alfred Kinsey and the heteronormativity of modern rationality. First Joint Meting of the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences (26th Annual meeting) and Cheiron: The International Society for the History of the Behavioral and Social Sciences (39th Annual Meeting). University College Dublin, Ireland.

Hegarty, P. (2007). The liminality of Catharine Cox Miles. Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the History and Philosophy of Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. Oxford, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2006). Verbal and visuospatial evidence of androcentrism in forty years of psychological research on gender differences. Annual meetings of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. Philadelphia, PA, USA.

Hegarty, P. (2006). Documenting and undoing androcentric explanations of gender differences.
Paper presented at the bi-annual meetings of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. Long Beach, CA, USA.

Hegarty, P., Buechel, C., & Ungar, S. (2006). Androcentric preferences for visuospatial representations of gender differences. Paper presented at Diagrams 2006. Stanford University, USA.

Hegarty, P. (2006). Gendered intelligence and inverted genius: Lewis Terman and the power of norms. Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the History and Philosophy of Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. York, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2005). Another generation of straight kids later. Paper presented at the conference ‘Queer Zagreb 3: The Heteronormativity of Childhood.’ Zagreb, Croatia.

Hegarty, P. (2005). Is homophobia anything like racism? A false belief that moderates old-fashioned heterosexism. Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the Social Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society Annual Conference. Edinburgh, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2005). Thinking categorically about the Euroepan Union (EU): Prototypes and norms. Poster presented at the Annual Meetings of the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology. Würzburg, Germany.

Hegarty, P. (2005). Undoing androcentric explanations of gender differences: Explaining the effect to be predicted. Psychology of Women Section of the British Psychological Society Annual Conference. Huddersfield, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2005). The gender of psychological genius: Degeneracy, homosexuality and giftedness in Lewis Terman’s research on gifted children. British Psychological Society Annual Conference. Manchester, UK.

Hegarty, P. & Golden, A.M. (2004). Attributions about stigmatized traits and attitudes towards stigmatized groups: An uncertain causal link? Social Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society Annual Conference. Liverpool, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2004). What do finger-lengths tell us about the construction of sexuality? Psychology of Women Section of the British Psychological Society Annual Conference. Brighton, UK.

Hegarty, P. & Hodges, I. (2003). Psychology after Foucault. Paper presented at the conference ‘Sexuality after Foucault.’ Center for the Study of Sexuality & Culture, University of Manchester, UK.

Hegarty, P., Pratto, F., & Lemieux, A. (2003). Heterosexist norms and heterosexist ambivalence: Drinking in Discomfort. Annual Meetings of the Social Psychology Division of the British Psychological Society. London, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2003). Archive inferno! The production of ignorance about the American Freud. Paper presented at the International Conference of Critical Psychology, University of Bath, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2003). Interpreting the Rorschach test: Poststructuralist Histories of Psychology and the Production of Knowledge about Sexuality. Paper presented at the annual meeting of Cheiron: The International Society for the History of the Behavioral Sciences. Durham, NH, USA.

Hegarty, P. (2003). Pleasure and danger in psychological testing. Paper presented at the conference “Sexualities, cultures and identities: New directions in gay, lesbian, and queer studies.” Center for Gender and Women’s Studies. University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2002). Gender construction and test construction: Masculine and feminine subjects and queer abjects in early psychometrics. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the UK National Women’s Studies Network. Belfast, Ireland.

Hegarty, P. (2002). Reading the spaces between lines of ink: Historicizing ignorance about homosexuality in American Rorschach research. Annual Meetings of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology. York, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2002). "It's not a choice, it’s the way we're built:" Symbolic beliefs about sexual orientation in Britain and the United States. Annual Meetings of the British Psychological Association. Blackpool, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2001). "It's not a choice, it’s the way we're built:" Symbolic beliefs about sexual orientation in Britain and the United States. Poster presented at the annual meetings of the Social Psychology Division of the British Psychological Society. University of Surrey, UK.

Hegarty, P. (2000). Academic psychology in the corporate university: No room for sexual politics? Paper presented at the conference "The corporate university and critical thought." CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY, U.S.A.

Hegarty, P. (2000). The "nature" of sexual orientation. Biology, immutability and tolerance. Bi-annual Meetings of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A.

Hegarty, P. & Pratto, F. (1999). Effects of norms and stereotypes on explanations. Research presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.

Hegarty, P., & Pratto, F. (1998). Gaps within a gender: Do gay men need to be explained? Annual meetings of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. Lexington, Kentucky, U.S.A.

Hegarty, P. (1998). Explaining empirical differences between social groups. Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Social Psychology Division of the British Psychological Society. University of Canterbury, Kent, UK.

Hegarty, P. (1998). The interpretation of genes. How attitudes and the construction of evidence influence the evaluation of genetic claims about stigmatized traits. Paper presented at the conference “Cultural Psychology.” Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

Hegarty, P. (1998). Heterosexual behavioral disconfirmation of stereotypes about gay men and lesbians. Poster presented at the annual meetings of the American Psychological Association. San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.

Hegarty, P. (1998). Disconfirmation of stereotypes: Heterosexual behavior and retrospective recall. Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Western regional division of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. Honolulu, HI, U.S.A.

Hegarty, P. (1997). Heterosexual tolerance and beliefs about sexual orientation: A correlational analysis. Poster presented at the annual meetings of the Western Psychological Association. Seattle, WA, U.S.A.

Hegarty, P. (1997). The genetics of obesity: Attributional and symbolic explanations of who buys it. Paper presented at the Stanford-Berkeley Social and Personality Psychology Symposium. University of California, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Hegarty, P. (1997). Passing (in) the Turing test: Queer thoughts on cognitive and gender performance. Paper presented at the Lewis and Clark Gender Studies Conference. Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR, U.S.A.

Hegarty, P. (1996). Paradoxes of AIDS education: Sex panic and public health. Paper presented at the conference “Managing Desire: HIV Prevention strategies for the 21st century.” University of California, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Hegarty, P. (1995). Seductive Details Re-examined: The effects of interesting details on learning from text. Annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.

Hegarty, P. (1992). Mathematics, Why so unfamiliar? Paper presented at the annual student congress of the Irish Psychological Society, Cork, Ireland.

Talks, Colloquia and Seminars

Recent Invited Talks

Finding a frontier in the taxonomic archive.  Kinsey’s wasps and WASPS revisited.  Invited paper presented at the symposium ‘Stories from the Archive’  Wellcome Institute: UCL Centre for the History of Medicine (2011).

From ideal husbands to inadequate wives.  Gerrymandering marital happiness with the man who made IQ.  Invited paper presented at the symposium ‘Biography and Its Place in the History of Psychology and Psychiatry.’  Wellcome Institute: UCL Centre for the History of Medicine (2011).

The history of sexuality.  An invited two-part symposium chaired for the Annual Meetings of the American Psychological Association.  San Diego, CA, USA.  Supported by APA Division 26: The Society for the History of Psychology (2010).

Why can’t the gifted child be queer?   Invited keynote presentation at the Conference “The Age of Sex,” co-organized by Monash University, University College Dublin and the University of Limerick.  Prato, Italy (2010).

Get yourself in order: Cognitive theories of gender and gendered selves. Invited talk at the 3rd Annual Southampton Symposium on Self and Identity. University of Southampton, UK (2009).

Has biological determinism made the world gay-friendly? Lessons from the United States and beyond. Invited address at the Annual General Meeting of the Sexual Diversity and Gender Issues Special Interest Group of the Psychological Society of Ireland. University College Dublin, Ireland (2009).

Gentlemen first? Graphing the order of the sexes. Paper invited for the European Science Foundation Funded Expert Meeting on Spatial Representation and Social Cognition. Venice, Italy (2008).

Alfred Kinsey, Lewis Terman, and the debate that made sex unsmart. Paper invited for the Symposium ‘Social Science and the Construction of Modern Sexuality’ Yale University, New Haven, USA (2008).

What comes after discourse for LGBTQ psychology? Paper presented at the launch of the volume Out in Psychology. Aston University, UK (2007).

Recent Invited Departmental and Program Colloquia and Seminars

2010 Department of Psychology, University of Plymouth, UK (Forthcoming)

2010 Department of Psychology, University of Kent, UK (Forthcoming)

2009 Department of Psychology, Royal Hollway, University of London, UK (Forthcoming)

2009 Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, Switzerland

2009 Department of Psychology, Kingston University, UK

2008 Department of Psychology, University of Jena, Germany

2008 Department of Psychology, University of Lancaster, UK

2008 Department of Psychology, University College Dublin, Ireland

2008 Department of Psychology, University of Surrey, UK

2007 Department of Psychology, University of Exeter, UK

2007 Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Sexuality and Gender in Europe, University of Exeter, UK

2007 Program in Women’s and Gender Studies, Yale University, USA