Ryan Brunner

Current Position
Dr. Brunner is a social psychologist who enjoys studying human behavior in a wide variety of social contexts. Dr. Brunner teaches Psychology as a Social Science, Westminster Seminar, Social Psychology (and lab), Personality Psychology (and lab), Cross Cultural and International Psychology, and Prejudice and Stereotyping. He helps supervise senior theses along with supervising students on independent research projects.

Scholarly/Professional Highlights

Dr. Brunner's research interests have encompassed a wide variety of topics within social psychology. Much of his graduate work focused on how doubts in one's ability to understand causal attributions influence perceptions of the self and others. Dr. Brunner's dissertation examined how the visual perspective taken when recalling past memories predicted perceptions of one's current identity. More recently, Dr. Brunner has pursued work relating to the role of cognitive biases in racial attitudes. Dr. Brunner loves collaborating with students on research and enjoys heading wherever the ideas take him.

Dr. Brunner has published his work in numerous research journals such as the American Journal of Public Health, Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, Social Cognition, and Memory and Cognition. He has also presented his work at international conferences in his field such as the Conference for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He is a member of the American Psychological Society, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Midwestern Psychological Association, the Society for Teaching of Psychology, Phi Beta Kappa, and Psi Chi. 

Education
Dr. Brunner earned a B.A. in psychology from the University of Missouri in Columbia. He received an M.A. and Ph.D. in Social Psychology (and a minor in Quantitative Psychology) from Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. 

Background
Dr. Brunner joined Westminster College in the fall of 2013. Before coming to Westminster, Dr. Brunner was an Assistant Professor at Dordt College in northwest Iowa. He also served as a lecturer for two years at Ohio State. Dr. Brunner grew up on a family farm in southwest Missouri, and he is excited to be a Missourian once again.

Personal Information

When Dr. Brunner is not at work, he enjoys spending time with his family. He loves to hike, bike, travel, and generally explore the world with his wife, Leslie, and his four young children, Jayden, Sonya, Mahaila, and Luke. Dr. Brunner also loves playing sports (especially basketball and disc golf), reading books and watching movies (he's a big sci-fi fan), and people watching (he is a social psychologist after all!).