Frederick L. Smyth

Research Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
University of Virginia

102 Gilmer Hall, Rm. 213
Box 400400
Charlottesville, VA 22904
USA

Office Phone: 434-924-3342
Fax: 434-982-4766

Email: fsmyth@virginia.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Publications

I direct the Full Potential Initiative, an NSF-funded longitudinal study of the development and influence of implicit attitudes about intellectual ability and academic belonging. I have found that biased implicit associations in the minds of students, teachers and professionals are not simple functions of the stereotypes in their environment, but vary predictably with their personal experiences and identities. Female and male scientists, for example, differ greatly in the strength of their implicit stereotype of science as male (weak stereotyping among the women but strong among the men), even though these women and men are equally aware of the cultural stereotype. An ongoing focus of my research is on the causal role that such varying implicit associations may play in shaping identities and contributing to perseverance in scientific studies and careers. My publication topics have included analyses of ethnic and gender differences in science graduation at selective colleges, standardized testing in college admission, comparisons of web- and laboratory-based implicit cognition experiments, and the relationship between implicit and explicit attitude measures.