Peter J. Burke has interests in micro-processes involving self and identity, agency, and interaction. One of the originators of Identity Theory, his research draws on Complexity Theory, Artificial Intelligence, and Computer Simulation to understand (1) how individuals, acting as agents with particular identities, come together in interaction to create larger aggregates, groups, organizations and societies, and (2) how these social structures constrain and limit the kinds of actions that individuals can take.

Scott L. Coltrane is interested in sociological issues relating to families, gender, and social inequality. Using a social constructionist approach, he examines the allocation of care work and the inter-relationships among fatherhood, motherhood, marriage, parenting, domestic labor, popular culture, ethnicity, and structural inequality. He currently has research grants with psychologists using multi-method techniques to study adaptations to economic stress and the meaning of fatherhood and stepfatherhood in European-American and Mexican-American families.

Masako Ishii-Kuntz has research interests in family and social psychology that are divided into two areas. First, she examines gender inequality in families. In particular, she has studied gendered division of household labor and childcare using data collected in the U.S., Japan and Norway. Currently, she is studying how masculinities and femininities are constructed by individual and familial factors as well as by political and social structures using data collected from Japanese men who belong to an advocacy group for shared parenting. Second, she examines the process of ethnic identity formation among recent immigrants from Asia. Integrating several social psychological theories, she constructed Social Psychological Refugee Theory to explain the process of ethnic/immigrant identity formation among post-1965 Asian immigrants. In addition to individual factors, she examines the role of immigrant families’ host communities, and home country experiences that influence the process of ethnic identity formation.

Karen Pyke is currently studying adaptation processes among Asian Americans in immigrant families and among “parachute children” who live in the U.S. apart from their parents. She brings a symbolic interactionist approach to her research by examining the underlying meanings that shape respondents understandings of family life, ethnic identity, and their gendered and racial experiences. She is particularly interested in processes of internalized racial oppression among Asian Americans who adopt oppressive racial stereotypes and ideology in their understandings of self and co-ethnic others. She has also examined how gender and cultural meanings impact interpersonal power dynamics in marriage and aging families.

Jan E. Stets has research interests related to social psychological processes involving the self and interaction. She primarily focuses on identities and emotions, but also studies the role of gender, status/power, and (in)justice in interaction. She often investigates these issues in the context of the family, particularly focusing on marital interaction.

Affiliated Faculty

Adalberto Aguirre, Jr. has interests in sociolinguistics and family socialization issues. His research examines the manner in which social identity is shaped for speakers in multilingual households. In particular, he examines how status characteristics - such as sex, and age - intersect with a speaker's language choice in a multilingual household. His other research interest in sociolinguistics examines how the language alternation patterns of bilingual speakers follow grammatical rules.

Kirk Williams is involved in research on partner violence; especially risk assessments for repeat violence and the escalating seriousness of violence. He is also beginning to examine the relationship between one’s identity and the production and prevention of youth violence, intimate violence, and criminal violence. He has taught courses on domestic/sexual/family violence.

Chuck Whitney has research interests in mass media processes and effects, particularly in the role of mass media and violence and in how television news and reality programming are implicated in the cultivation of fear. He was a senior investigator on the National Television Violence Study, the largest and most comprehensive content analysis of U.S. television and cable programming ever undertaken.