Rose McDermott
rose_mcdermott@brown.edu
111 Thayer Street, Room 343
David and Marianna Fisher University Professor of International Relations
Rose McDermott is the David and Mariana Fisher University Professor of International Relations at Brown University and a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She works in the areas of political psychology, American foreign and defense policy, and gender. She received her Ph.D.(Political Science) and M.A. (Experimental Social Psychology) from Stanford University and has taught at Cornell and UCSB. She has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and the Women and Public Policy Program, all at Harvard University. She has been a fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences twice. She is the author of five books, a co-editor of two additional volumes, and author of over two hundred academic articles across a wide variety of disciplines encompassing topics such as gender, experimentation, intelligence, cyber security. emotion and decision making, and the biological and genetic bases of political behavior.
I work on a wide variety of different topics. Current projects include a large series of survey experiments examining attitudes toward gender inequality across multiple countries encompassing multiple topics. I am also currently involved in a series of projects related to ethical considerations in implementing field experiments. I also work on topics including identity, intelligence, cybersecurity, genetic contributions to political attitudes and behaviors, and emotional aspects of decision-making.
McDermott, R. (K. Monroe, Ed.) (2018). The Evils of Polygyny: The David Easton Lectures by Rose McDermott. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
McDermott, Rose (2019). Political Science’s #metoo moment. Journal of Women, Politics and Policy. Special issue edited by Nadia Brown.
McDermott, Rose. Leader’s Emotional Manipulation of Political Identity: An Evolutionary Perspective. (2019). Leadership Quarterly Special Issue on the Evolution and Biology of Leadership (Guest editors: Mark Van Vugt and Chris von Rueden).
McDermott, Rose. (2019). Psychological Underpinnings of Post-Truth in Political Beliefs. PS
McDermott, Rose (2018). The Nature of Narcissism. For H-Diplo. https://issforum.org/roundtables/policy/1-5BE-Narcissism
McDermott, Rose.(2018) Coalitional Rivalry May Hurt in Trade, but Help in War: Commentary on Boyer & Petersen. Behavior and Brain Sciences
McDermott, Rose & Hatemi, Peter K.(Guest editors). (2018). Evolutionary Psychology: special issue on Evolution and Politics
McDermott, Rose & Hatemi, Peter K.(2018). To go forward, we must look back: The importance of evolutionary psychology for understanding modern politics.
Evolutionary Psychology special issue (Guest Editors: Rose McDermott and Peter K. Hatemi)
McDermott, R, Lopez, A. & Hatemi, P. (2017). Blunt Not the Heart, Enrage it: The Psychology of Revenge and Deterrence. Texas National Security Review 1(1).
Bar-Joseph, Uri & McDermott, Rose (2017). Intelligence Successes and Failure: The Human Factor. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hatemi, Peter K., Charles Crabtree & McDermott, Rose (January 15, 2017) Sexual Preferences and Political Ideology: Does Performance in the Bedroom Predict Performance in the Ballot Box?” Personality and Individual Differences
McDermott,R. (2017). The Evolutionary Psychology of Coercion. Comparative Strategy
Glowacki L, Isakov A, Wrangham R, McDermott, R., Fowler J & Christakis N. Key individuals and friendship networks facilitate high-risk collective action in inter-group violence (October 10, 2016). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dean, Benjamin & McDermott, Rose (2017). A research agenda to improve decision making in cyber security policy. Penn State Journal of Law and International Affairs 5(1).
McDermott, Rose & Hatemi, Peter K (May 31, 2016). The Relationship Between Physical Aggression, Foreign Policy and Moral Choices: Phenotypic and Genetic Findings. Aggressive Behavior
McDermott, Rose & Bar-Joseph, Uri. (2016) Pearl Harbor and Midway: The Decisive Influence of Two Men on the Outcome. Intelligence and National Security, 1-14.
McDermott, Rose, Lopez, Anthony & Hatemi, Peter K. (2016) An Evolutionary Approach to Political Leadership. Security Studies 25(4), 677-698
McDermott, Rose (2016). Group Behavior in the Military May Present A Unique Case. Commentary on Baumeister et al. Behavior and Brain Sciences, 39
Hatemi, Peter K. & McDermott, Rose (2016). Give Me Attitudes. Annual Review of Political Science, 331-350.
INTL 0600
PLCY 2070 Decision Making
POLS 0400 Introduction to International Relations
POLS 1821P Political Psychology in International Relations
POLS 1821M War in Film and Literature
POLS 1823G Woman and War
POLS 1550 War and Politics
POLS 1560 American Foreign Policy
PLCY 2735 Women and Nations
POLS 2000 Strategies of Inquiry and Research Design
September 5, 2019 The New York Times
In the New York Times, "In a paper that parallels the work of Petersen and his colleagues, Rose McDermott and Peter K. Hatemi, political scientists at Brown and Penn State, argue that Trump and other right-wing populist leaders have tapped into evolutionarily based “tribal sentiments and drives.”
March 7, 2019 Christian Science Monitor
Professor Rose McDermott comments on human nature's extremes of kindness and aggression, saying "Over long periods of time among large numbers of people, you end up with a more – slightly more – egalitarian system. We breed a kind of peacefulness, at least for the in-group."
October 15, 2018 Los Angeles Times
Professor Rose McDermott says younger women are more sensitive to perceived harassment than older ones. “How we draw the line between inappropriate or patronizing behavior and genuine harassment is really challenging because women themselves don’t agree...Those in-between spaces are getting harder to negotiate.”
July 17, 2018 Pass Blue
The WomenStats Project links the status of women to the security and behavior of countries, offering insights into women's lives all over the world. The database helped uphold a ban on polygyny in Canada when Professor Rose McDermott submitted empirical research that used WomenStats numbers to the Supreme Court of British Columbia.
April 20, 2018 News from Brown
Among the winners of the annual award program is Professor Rose McDermott, who "earned a Distinguished Research Achievement Award for her pioneering scholarship, including in the area of political psychology, and her innovative interdisciplinary work across political science, international relations, psychology and behavioral genetics."
December 5, 2017 Long Now: Conversations at The Interval
Professor Rose McDermott joined Long Now's The Interval podcast to explain how the genetics and the enviornment contribute to political opinions.
4 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. Joukowsky Forum
Meet the Author, Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy