Department of Psychological Sciences

Laura Brannon

brannonContact Information

Office: BH 419
E-mail: lbrannon@ksu.edu

 

 

Research Interests

DR. BRANNON IS CURRENTLY ACCEPTING GRADUATE STUDENTS.

Dr. Brannon is a social psychologist with research interests in the areas of persuasion and positive psychology. Dr. Brannon conducts “full-cycle” social psychological research, which means that she conducts basic research studying the processes of persuasion and compliance and extends this research to applied areas. Her two main applied research interests are health psychology and consumer psychology. Much of her current research deals with the interface of these two areas, "social marketing." Social marketing is a relatively recent trend in the applied literature in which researchers apply tried-and-true marketing and social influence techniques to the improvement of social problems (for example, encouraging health-promoting behaviors). Although Dr. Brannon is interested in conducting research to address a variety of social problems, much of her current work is in the area of health persuasion. Dr. Brannon uses a variety of approaches to address these issues. She enjoys interdisciplinary research and frequently integrates ideas from other fields into her studies. For example, several studies have examined how to tailor persuasive messages to recipients’ personalities in order to improve processing of the messages.

Two other areas of interest are promoting prosocial (helping) behaviors and examining the benefits of religiosity. These areas of research focus on “positive psychology,” or how to bring out what is good in people.

Student Involvement

Dr. Brannon is accepting new graduate students. Dr. Brannon works with several graduate and undergraduate students in the areas described above, in addition to independent research projects suggested by students. Although each student’s participation is unique, students frequently are introduced to the research being conducted by members of the research team by contributing to an ongoing study, and then moving onto more independent research. Students regularly are co-authors on the presentations and publications to which they contribute, and if appropriate, first authors. Given that Dr. Brannon has interests in both basic research and applied areas, she supports and prepares students who are interested in both academic (teaching and/or research) and non-academic (applied) jobs. The focus is on helping students be successful and achieve whatever their individual goals are. Dr. Brannon can be contacted by phone (785-532-0604) or email (lbrannon@ksu.edu) by students who are interested in working in her lab.

Representative Applied Research

(* Indicates student co-author)

  • *Jeter, W.K., & Brannon, L.A. (in press). “I’ll make it up to you:” Examining the effect of apologies on forgiveness. Journal of Positive Psychology.
  • *Miller, M.M., & Brannon, L.A. (in press). Testing mindfulness-based acceptance against implementation intentions to discourage counterintentional cell phone use. Mindfulness.
  • *Jeter, W.K., & Brannon, L.A. (2015). Increasing awareness of potentially helpful motivations and techniques for forgiveness. Counseling and Values, 602(2), 186-200.
  • *Gopalan, N., *Miller, M.M., & Brannon, L.A. (2013). Motivating adult children to provide support to a family caregiver. Stress and Health, 29(4), 345-348.
  • *York, V.K., Brannon, L.A., & *Miller, M.M. (2012). Increasing the effectiveness of messages promoting responsible underage drinking: Tailoring to personality and matching to context. Health Communication, 27(3), 302-309.
  • *York, V.K., Brannon, L.A., & *Miller, M.M. (2012). Marketing responsible drinking behavior: Comparing the effectiveness of responsible drinking messages tailored to three possible ‘personality’ conceptualizations. Health Marketing Quarterly, 29(1), 49-65.

Representative Basic Research (persuasion and mediation of influence tactics)

(* Indicates student co-author)

  • Brannon, L. A., *Tagler, M. J., & Eagly, A. H. (2007). The moderating role of attitude strength in selective exposure to information. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 611-617.
  • Brannon, L. A., & Brock, T. C. (2001). Scarcity claims elicit extreme responding to persuasive messages: Role of cognitive elaboration.Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(3), 365-375.
  • Brannon, L. A., & Brock, T. C. (2001). Limiting time for responding enhances behavior corresponding to the merits of compliance appeals: Refutations of heuristic-cue theory in service and consumer settings.Journal of Consumer Psychology, 10(3), 135-146.
  • *Conner, A.E., *Miller, M.M., & Brannon, L.A. (in press). A test of the automaticity assumption of compliance tactics: Discouraging undergraduate binge drinking by appealing to consistency and reciprocity. Communication Quarterly.

Current Graduate Students

  • Angela Rose