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Interview w/Tracy Esposito
College of New Jersey
Eric Alexander Hurley, PhD.
Assistant Professor of
Social Psychology-visiting
University
of Massachuetts-Amherst
CURRENT RESEARCH
Our work builds on sociocultural theory with a focus on aspects of African American culture as distinguished from the mainstream of
US culture. Our work seeks to build on these ideas in three related directions.
The first involves examining the expression of communalism (the priority of social bonds and interconnectedness with others)
as central to the value orientation cultivated in African American culture. The second strand of our empirical
research has involved attempts to operationalize social psychological variables as observable psychological phenomena.
The third strand of empirical research is aimed at examining the extent to which the expression of a single cultural theme
-group orientation- may vary among groups that have significantly different cultural origins, histories and traditions. CULTURAL CODING:
This project involves developing methods for quantifying the cultural variables at the level
of specific behaviors. In this work we use video recordings of participants working in small groups to code for
specific behaviors associated with cultural variables (currently communalism and individualism). This project
seeks to make culture more broadly accessible to scientific inquiry.
GROUP PROCESSES CODING:
This project involves refinement of a methodology we use to quantify group processes
variables. In this work we use video recordings of participants working in small groups to code for specific
behaviors associated with group processes. The methodology has successfully established a relationship between
the exhibition of process-loss behaviors during group work and subsequent task performance.
BETWEEN GROUP VARIATION IN GROUP ORIENTATION:
This work involves reconsidering self-report
methods of measuring group-orientation (known variously as communalism, collectivism, self-construal etc.).
Our pilot work suggests that between group differences in the expression of group-orientation may compromise
the validity of most measures when used for groups other than those from whose behaviors they were derived.
Our work argues for extensive ethnographic redevelopment of the constructs and measures.
