Psychology Professor's Research Aimed at Health Behavior, Behavioral Freedom

Assistant psychology professor Dr. Benjamin Rosenberg’s extensive expertise and knowledge on health behavior is catching on in the media.
 
This month, Dr. Rosenberg lent his expertise on scientific strategies to a article entitled “How to Give Yourself a Pep Talk” about research showing that self-talk has a positive effect on self-confidence and self-efficacy.

“What we colloquially refer to as pep talks are most often called self-talk in the scientific literature,” Dr. Rosenberg said. “And self-talk has one very important advantage over a pep talk from someone else: We tend to trust ourselves more than we trust other people.”

Dr. Rosenberg’s research extends from research methods and statistics to survey design to health behavior and messaging focused on the restriction of behavioral freedom. In November, he was featured in a article on vaping about the psychological risks of favored vapes.

Research by Dr. Rosenberg has been published on psychological reactance theory, goal disruption theory, and anger and depression. In 2016, Social Science and Medicine published a research piece entitled “Anger, frustration, boredom and the department of motor vehicles: Can negative emotions impede organ donor registration?”

While a PhD student at Claremont Graduate University, Dr. Rosenberg worked on a federally-funded research grant focused on evaluating the effectiveness of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, which featured a series of ads targeting kids’ drug use. The research team was given exclusive access to the ads themselves and an enormous database of questions detailing kids’ perceptions of the ads.
 

You May Also Like