Michael Milburn

Psychology Department--UMass/Boston

RECENT INTERVIEWS:

Boston Globe, 11/16/08 Profile of Milburn’s art and psychology careers

Newton Tab, 1/20/09 Profile of Milburn’s art career

MSNBC, 1/19/05: Interviewed on giving advice to parents about teenagers and sex

New York Times, 5/30/04: Interviewed for story on teenage sex

Newsweek, 5/13/04: Interviewed about public response to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal

A.B. (1972), Stanford University

Ph.D. (1978), Harvard University

Description of research: Dr. Milburn's research falls into three different areas: political psychology, sexuality, and art.

Dr. Milburn's research in political psychology focuses on the determinants of political attitudes, the role of emotion in public opinion, and the effects of the mass media on political attitudes and social behavior. Working in the context of affect displacement theory, i.e., that emotions from childhood can be displaced onto adult political attitudes, his research has demonstrated a relationship between experiences of harsh childhood punishment and support for punitive public policies such as the death penalty and the use of military force. A recent book, written with Dr. Sheree Conrad, The Politics of Denial, explores the implications of these research findings for public opinion in the United States. His research on the effects of the mass media has established that emotionally arousing, dramatic images in television news stories can decrease viewers' capacity to process and recall the information in the stories.  Dr. Milburn, in collaboration with Dr. Sheree Conrad of the UMass/Boston Psychology Department, is also currently engaged in an extensive study of sexual attitudes and experiences.  The results of this research are presented in their newest book, Sexual Intelligence. Prof. Milburn is also an artist and interested in the psychology of the visual arts. He has recently published in this area, and if you want to see some of his art, go www.michaelmilburn.com

Awards:
Appointed one of UMass/Boston’s first E-Fellows, 2004, recognizing the quality of his online teaching.

Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award, 1998, University of Massachusetts/Boston

Alfred M. Freedman Award for Best Paper of the Conference, 1993 Annual Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology, for paper, "Childhood Punishment, Denial, and Political Ideology"

Fellow, Shorenstein Center for the Study of Politics, the Press, and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Spring 1993.

Teaching:
Undergraduate

• Social Psychology
• Social Attitudes and Public Opinion
• Communication and Society
• Core 140: Seminar in Quantitative Reasoning
• Multiple Regression

Graduate

• Advanced Statistics

Selected publications:
Conrad, S. D., & Milburn, M. A.  (2001). Sexual Intelligence.  New York: Crown.

Milburn, M. A., & Conrad, S. D. (1996). The Politics of Denial. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Milburn, M. A. (1991). Persuasion and Politics: The Social Psychology of Public Opinion. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks- Cole/Wadsworth.

Milburn, M. A., Soudak, G., & Dellinger, L. (2003). Dissociation and drawing on the right side of the brain. Visual Arts Research, 28, 53-60.

Begany, J. J.; Milburn, M. A. (2002). Psychological predictors of sexual harassment: Authoritarianism, hostile sexism, and rape myths. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 3(2), 119-126.

Milburn, M. A. (2000).  The effects of viewing R-rated movie scenes that objectify women on perceptions of date rape.  Sex Roles, 43, 645-664.

Milburn, M. A., Conrad, S. D., Sala, F., & Carberry, S. (1995). Childhood punishment, denial, and political attitudes. Political Psychology, 16, 447-478.

Kelley-Milburn, D., & Milburn, M. A. (1995). CYBERPSYCH: Resources for psychologists on the Internet. Psychological Science, 6, 203-211.

Milburn, M. A., & McGrail, A. B. (1992). The dramatic presentation of news and its effects on cognitive complexity. Political Psychology, 13, 613-632.

Jussim, L. , Milburn, M. A., & Nelson, W. (1991). Emotional openness: Sex-role stereotypes and self-perceptions. Representative Research in Social Psychology, 19, 3-20.

Krosnick, J. A., & Milburn, M. A. (1990). The psychological determinants of political opinionation. Social Cognition, 8, 49-72.

Email: michael.milburn@umb.edu

Back to the Psychology home page