Robin Akert

Robin Akert is a Professor of Psychology at Wellesley College, where she has been a faculty member since 1981. She specializes in nonverbal communication, research methodology, and social psychology. Her work explores the decoding of nonverbal cues in social interactions, personality correlates of decoding ability, and the historical foundations of nonverbal research. She has developed innovative tools like the Social Interpretations Task and the Visual Nonverbal Decoding Task with collaborators Dane Archer and Abigail Panter.

Education:

• B.A., University of California-Santa Cruz
• M.A., Princeton University
• Ph.D., Princeton University (Experimental Social Psychology)

Research Interests:

• Methodological rigor in nonverbal decoding studies
• Psychological analysis of advertising
• Historical analysis of empirical nonverbal research from Charles Darwin to early 20th-century psychology
• Cognitive and personality factors influencing nonverbal sensitivity

Awards & Grants:

• Recipient of the Wellesley College Pinanski Teaching Prize (1987)
• Grant support from the American Association of University Women for historical research

Teaching & Publications:

• Co-author of the textbook Social Psychology (6th edition, translated into 8 languages)
• Teaches courses like Social Psychology (PSYC210), Research Methods in Social Psychology, and Nonverbal Communication