L. Rowell Huesmann
Director, RCGD

Research Center for Group Dynamics

The mission of the Research Center for Group Dynamics since 1948 has been to advance the understanding of human behavior in social contexts. Our experimental studies in laboratories and in natural settings — including schools, businesses, and community groups — shed light on issues involved in social decision-making, prejudice, social relations, attitudes, and emotion. The findings have immediate practical applications to social concerns such as crime, delinquency, and racism.

Our Services and Activities

Research

• We organize our work in collaborative and often interdisciplinary research programs that address substantive problems regarding the dynamics of social behavior. Our studies have examined the life-course trajectories of aggressive and violent behavior, have shown a clear link between aggression and media violence, have established how culture changes the way we think and behave socially, have identified factors that increase scholastic achievement in minority students, and have investigated the nature and severity of mental disorders among different populations in the United States.
• We operate the nation's largest research center on African Americans and have trained many of the people who study this group's needs. We are now expanding this work to the study of racism throughout the world.
• Our experimental laboratories include facilities for videotaping, recording, and observing focus groups, for conducting real-time psychological experiments on perception, and for conducting experiments using computers with access to the Internet.
• As we have become increasingly cross-disciplinary, our more than 50 affiliated faculty members — most based in U-M departments — now include developmental psychologists, cognitive psychologists, personality psychologists, anthropologists, economists, and communication scientists.
• Long-established programs include the Achievement Research Program, the Aggression Research Program, the Contingencies of Self-worth Program, the Culture and Cognition Program, the Program for Research on Black Americans, and the Program on Teaching, Learning, and Technology. More recent programs include the Biosocial Foundations of Caregiving Program, the Altruism & Cooperation Program, and the Decision Making and Behavioral Economics Program.
• Our research is theory driven, utilizes experimental methods as well as survey methods, and demonstrates the highest levels of methodological sophistication. We draw on new bio-social methodologies — such as brain imaging and hormone assays — and are conducting bio-social experiments. We have also increased our emphasis on formal mathematical modeling of processes.