Research Interests: Frank T. McAndrew, Ph.D.

Social Media and Internet Psychology
Recently, I have become interested in how social inteaction plays out over the internet.  Communication over the internet poses challenges that are unprecedented in human  history in that we communicate with people whom we may have never met in person, and the paralinguistic vocal cues and other nonverbal behaviors that we use to convey the subtle nuances of meaning are completely missing.  Also, social networking tools such as Facebook provide new avenues for gossip, social comparison, and other standard social psychological phenomena. I would love to find out how it all works.  This has become a popular research topic for my senior research students, and I have several different projects in various stages of development.  All of the co-authors on the studies below are (or were) Knox College students.

I am currently consulting with a start-up firm called "KNIT: Your Virtual Meeting Space" in an attempt to improve the naturalness of social interaction online.

Podstawska, N., & McAndrew, F. T. (IN PROGRESS). Gender differences in the perception of sexual interest in text messages. (In preparation for publication and for presentation at the 2022(July) meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, Detroit.)

McAndrew, F. T. (2018, August 3). Why we still fall for the "Nigerian Prince" scam. Essay published in a wide range of media outlets, including The Conversation, Psychology Today, Inverse, International Business Times, Heavy, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, & The Reader.

McAndrew, F. T. (2015, February). Millennials and Social Media: It may not be What You Think. In Out of the Ooze: Navigating the 21st Century with a Stone-Age Mind.  Psychology Today Magazine Blog.

McAndrew, F. T. (2014). The "Sword of a Woman:" Gossip and Female AggressionAggression and Violent Behavior, 19, 196-199. (reviews research on Facebook aggression)

McAndrew, F. T., & Shah, S. S. (2013).  Sex Differences in Jealousy Over Facebook Activity.  Computers in Human Behavior, 29, 2603-2606.
(Also a Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), Austin, Texas; February, 2014.)

McAndrew, F. T. and Jeong, H. S. (2012). Who does what on Facebook? Age, Sex, and Relationship Status as Predictors of Facebook UseComputers in Human Behavior, 28, 2359-2365. 

McAndrew, F. T., & Jeong, H. S. (2012, June).  The Evolutionary Psychology of Facebook: mate seeking, status signaling, and the maintenance of kinship networks.  Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, Albuquerque, NM.

McAndrew, F. T., & De Jonge, C. R.  (2011). Electronic person perception: What do we infer about people from the style of their e-mail messagesSocial Psychological and Personality Science, 2, 403-407.