Steven R. Lawyer, Ph.D
Professor, Clinical Psychology - Director of Clinical Training
Office: Garrison Rm 424
B.A. (1995) Western Michigan University
M.S. (1997) Auburn University
Pre-Doctoral Clinical Internship (2001-02), University of Mississippi Medical Center
Ph.D. (2002) Auburn University
Postdoctoral Fellowship (2002-04), National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, Medical University of South Carolina
Research Interests
Dr. Lawyer's Discounting and Risk-Taking lab focuses on how choices that people make in their day-to-day lives impact their health and well-being. He uses procedures based in behavioral economics, with a particular focus on delay discounting and probability discounting, to understand the psychological and contextual factors that influence human health problem behaviors such as sexual risk-taking, obesity, and substance abuse. He also is interested in trauma and anxiety and evidence-based approaches to ethical research practices.
Dr. Lawyer will not be accepting students for admission in fall 2024.
Recent Publications
Mahoney, C. T., Lawyer, S. R., Pemberton, S. E., & Marchant, K. M. (2022). A laboratory examination of risky sexual behavior among female sexual trauma survivors. Journal of Traumatic Stress. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.22866
Lawyer, S. R., Holcomb, B., & Prihodova, K. (2021). Immediate and delayed reactions to laboratory exposure to a trauma-related cue. Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1177/1556264621996102
Lawyer, S.R., Prihodova, T., Prihodova, K., Rasmussen, E., Doubkova, N., & Preiss, M. (2021). Steeper Delay Discounting for Potentially Real versus Hypothetical Cigarettes (but not money) in Czech Republic Smokers. The Psychological Record. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-021-00464-z
Lawyer, S. R. & Jenks, C. (2020). Emotion suppression decreases delay discounting for monetary outcomes. The Psychological Record, 70, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-019-00361-6
Mahoney, C. T., & Lawyer, S. R. (2018). Domain-specific relationships in sexual measures of impulsive behavior. Archives of sexual behavior, 47(6), 1591-1599. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1210-y
Smith, K., Lawyer, S.R., & Swift, J. (2018). A meta-analysis of nonsystematic responding in delay and probability discounting. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 26, 94-107. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pha0000167
Lawyer, S. R., & Mahoney, C. T. (2018). Delay discounting and probability discounting, but not response inhibition, are associated with sexual risk taking in adults. The Journal of Sex Research, 55, 863-870. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2017.1350627