Deborah South Richardson, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Psychology
Augusta State University
Augusta, GA 30904
(706) 729-2451
drichardson@aug.edu


Dr. Richardson's Vita
(.pdf format)

Professional Experience:
After completing her Ph.D. at Kent State University, Dr. Richardson taught at the University of Georgia for 9 years, serving as Associate Department Chair and as Chair of the Social Psychology Program. After a year as Visiting Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, she served as Associate Professor and Professor in the Department of Psychology at Florida Atlantic University until 2000. She became Chair of the Department of Psychology at Augusta State University in fall 2001.

Research:
Dr. Richardson is co-author (with Robert A. Baron) of a leading textbook, Human Aggression, author of  7 chapters on interpersonal aggression or personal relationships in textbooks or edited volumes, and author or co-author of over 50 articles in refereed professional journals and over 125 presentations at regional, national, or international conferences. She is proud of the fact that her dissertation is her only single-authored paper; most of her publications include graduate (and sometimes undergraduate) students as co-authors.

Dr. Richardson's primary research concerns the study of interpersonal aggression and conflict, with particular emphasis on gender differences in aggression, cognitive mechanisms for the control of direct aggression, and the nature, determinants, and consequences of indirect aggression in populations ranging from preadolescents to senior citizens. She is just beginning a program of research that will examine direct and indirect strategies for conflict resolution in the workplace.

Dr. Richardson has also conducted a variety of teaching-related research projects. Most recently she has applied the social influence principles in Latané's theory of Dynamic Social Impact to the development of techniques for active learning during face-to-face classroom interaction. One of those techniques, Focused Interactive Learning, is an important component of most of the courses she teaches.

Instructional Activities:
Dr. Richardson has taught a variety of courses (from aggression to statistics) to both graduate and undergraduate students in a variety of instructional settings, from the typical college classroom, to classrooms on military bases in Asia, to workshops in organizational settings. She has received both student-initiated and peer-initiated teaching awards, teaches a graduate class on Teaching of Psychology, and has several teaching-related publications and presentations

Administrative and Organizational Activities:
Dr. Richardson is a member of several professional organizations, serves on the editorial board of Aggressive Behavior  and on the Executive Council of the International Society for Research on Aggression. She co-founded and continues to oversee the activities of the Society of Southeastern Social Psychologists, whose annual meetings attract more than 100 scholars for a weekend of scientific and professional exchange. She served as secretary-treasurer of Social Science Conferences Inc and co-director of Nags Head Conference Center, which sponsored over 150 conferences over a period of 18 years.