Education
Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology,
Kent State University, 1997
B.A. in Psychology, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, 1990
Geoffrey Munro
(he/him/his)
Professor
Areas of Expertise
Social Psychology
Statistics
Research Methods
Persuasion and Social Influence
Biography
Dr. Munro served as a visiting assistant professor at Hope College until 1998. He then taught at St. Mary鈥檚 College of Maryland until 2002 when he arrived at Towson.
Research Interests
Dr. Munro conducts social psychological research on motivated reasoning, biases in judgment and decision-making caused by wanting to reach favorable conclusions or avoid threatening conclusions. These biases have been studied in a number of areas including judgments about scientific and sociopolitical information as well as health and personality feedback.
Selected Publications
Munro, G.D., & Huang, T. (2023). How much evidence is enough? Biased thresholds in judgments of scientific conclusions. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 45, 25-37.
Munro, G.D., Lesko, J.A., Clements, Z., Santoro, A., & Tsai, J. (2020). Perceptions of counterarguing and source derogation as attitude resistance techniques. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology, 4, 194-204.
Munro, G.D., & Behlen, M.M. (2017). Connecting psychological science with climate change: A persuasion and social influence assignment. Teaching of Psychology, 44, 274-277.
Munro, G.D., & Munro, C.A. (2014). 鈥淪oft鈥� versus 鈥渉ard鈥� psychological science: Biased evaluations of scientific evidence that threatens or supports a strongly-held political identity. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 36, 533-543.
Munro, GD., Zirpoli, JB, Schuman, A, & Taulbee, J (2013). Third party labels bias evaluations of political platforms and candidates. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 35, 151-163.
Munro, GD., Stansbury, JA, & Tsai, J (2012). A causal role for negative affect: Misattribution in biased evaluations of scientific information. Self & Identity, 11, 1 -15.
Munro, GD., (2010). The scientific impotence excuse: Discounting belief-threatening scientific abstracts. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 40, 579-600.
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Currently teaching
Dr. Munro regularly teaches Introduction to Social Psychology, Behavioral Statistics, and Research Methods in Psychology. Less regularly, he has taught Introduction to Psychology, Cross-Cultural Psychology, Advanced Social Psychology (for graduate students) and special topics courses like Persuasion and Social Influence and the Psychology of Environmental Sustainability.