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I received my PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Virginia in 2009. I then worked for several years as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology at Ghent University in Belgium before moving to the University of Florida where I was a faculty member in the Psychology Department from 2014 until starting my position here at Laurier in 2026.
I have helped run the Project Implicit research website for more than a decade now, currently serving as Chair of the Executive Committee.
My most central research interest is on understanding “implicit bias” – the automatic effect of target cues on behaviour. The portion of our minds that we experience as “us,” those parts that we believe guide our behavior, are a remarkably small proportion of the whole. I study those aspects of mental processing that are less available to conscious awareness, that may come out when we aren’t paying as much attention or are tired, and/or that are not as much under our intentional control. Things you might experience as “pop up thoughts” or gut reactions when you encounter a presumed member of a particular social group (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation). And that the you that you choose to be may or may not agree with. In doing that work, I have focused heavily on testing the fitness of the various tasks designed to measure implicit bias as the scientific study of the construct of implicit bias is highly intertwined with the potential measurement of those biases. Throughout my program of research, whenever possible, I focus on socially-meaningful issues including understanding (and, thereby, changing) attitudes toward marginalized groups and assessing who is more (or less) focused on things like disaster risks and climate change.
- Fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (2023)
- Fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychologists (inducted 2019)
- University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teacher of the Year Award (2015-2016)
I plan to start a research lab in the Winter 2027 term. This will include undergraduate research opportunities in the form of volunteer RAships, honours thesis projects (PS499), and/or directed study projects (PS490).
I am also open to working with graduate students through formal and/or informal mechanisms.
Please email me or stop by my office hours to find out more information about working in my lab.
- Hahn, A., Moran, T., Adeyemi, F., Akinnola, I., Stelter, M., Essien, I., & Smith, C. T. (in press). Reframing Africa’s image: Positive information outperforms negation in changing explicit negative evaluations. Social Psychological and Personality Science.
- Douglas, S., Smith, C. T., & Webster, G. D. (2026). Breadmakers and breadwinners: Measuring prescriptive gender role beliefs separately for men and women and on a common metric. Sex Roles, 92, 49.
- Howell, J. L., Ratliff, K. A., & Smith, C. T. (2026). Comparing White and Black athlete racial activism: Examining NFL and NBA players’ choice of social justice uniform messages. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 29, 263-280.
- Alaukik, A., Kvam, P., & Smith, C. T. (2025). Understanding attitude associations by modeling decision processes on the IAT: A tutorial on the tug-of-war model. Social Cognition, 43, 452-472.
- Van Dessel, P., Hughes, S., Perugini, M., Smith, C. T., Mao, Z.-F., & De Houwer, J. (2025). The role of awareness and demand in evaluative learning. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 128, 983-1049.
- Ratliff, K. A., & Smith, C. T. (2024). The Implicit Association Test. Dædalus 153, 51-64.
- Kvam, P. D., Irving, L. H., Sokratous, K., & Smith, C. T. (2023). Improving the reliability and validity of the IAT with a dynamic model driven by similarity. Behavior Research Methods, 56, 2158–2193.
- Colvin, V. E., Prokosch, M. L., Von Meding, J., Chmutina, K., & Smith, C. T. (2023). Individual differences in psychological rigidity and beliefs about system fitness predict attitudes about social determinants of disaster risk. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 95, 103876.
- Prokosch, M. L., Smith, C. T., Kerry, N., & von Meding, J. (2022). Too strong to care? Investigating the links between formidability, worldviews, and views on climate and disaster. Politics and the Life Sciences, 41, 200-231.
- Ratliff, K., A., & Smith, C. T (2022). Implicit bias as automatic behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 33, 213-218.
Contact Info:
Office location: N2074A
Office hours: Fridays 10 am to noon or by appointment
Languages spoken: English