Research Field Guide
How to Get a Psychology Research Position
To get a Psychology research position, find professors who are actively publishing in Psychology, read what they actually work on, and email one of them a short, specific note. The work mixes in-person and computational tasks, so there is a way to help either on-site or remotely.
Below are 12 professors publishing in Psychology right now, what each is working on, and how to reach out. Every name and topic is pulled from real, recent publication data, not a generic list.
Psychology professors who are actively publishing
| Professor | Institution | Recent research focus |
|---|---|---|
| Murray B. Stein | University of California San Diego | Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development |
| Dan J. Stein | South African Medical Research Council | Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development |
| George Patton | The University of Melbourne | Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development |
| Terrie E. Moffitt | Duke University | Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development |
| Hans W. Hoek | Twitter (United States) | Eating Disorders and Behaviors |
| Rajesh Sagar | All India Institute of Medical Sciences Raipur | Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development |
| Ronald C. Kessler | Harvard University | Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development |
| James J. Gross | Palo Alto University | Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development |
| Holly E Erskine | The University of Queensland | Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development |
| Jordi Alonso | Universidade de Ribeirão Preto | Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development |
| Muhammad Aziz Rahman | Federation University | COVID-19 and Mental Health |
| Avshalom Caspi | University of London | Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development |
Sourced from OpenAlex publication records. Click a name to see their full profile and recent papers.
What Psychology research involves
Psychology studies how people think, feel, develop, and behave. Active areas include child and adolescent psychosocial and emotional development, eating disorders and behavior, and mental health, including how events like the COVID-19 pandemic affected it. The work is mixed. Some of it is hands-on with people: running experiments, interviewing participants, and coding behavior, which happens on campus or in clinics. A large part is data work: designing surveys, cleaning datasets, and running statistics, which you can do remotely. For a student, that mix is an advantage, because labs often need help on both sides. Read recent papers to see whether a professor runs lab studies, field studies, or mainly analyzes data.
How to email a Psychology professor
Psychology labs almost always need two things from research assistants: help running studies and help with data. Offer whichever fits you and the lab. If you have statistics or coding skills (R, SPSS, Python), say so and offer to help clean and analyze data remotely. If you are local, offer to help run sessions, recruit participants, or code behavioral data on-site. Reference one recent paper, on development or mental health, for example, and ask a specific question about the design or finding. Mention any research-methods or statistics coursework. Keep it concrete and short, and avoid saying the work is inspiring; show you actually read it.
Psychology overlaps with nearby fields. If you are casting a wider net, look at research positions in Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, Public Health, and Epidemiology.