Rose McDermott

About

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 directs the Watson Postdoctoral Program and works in the area of political psychology. Her academic background includes a Ph.D. in political science and a master's degree in experimental social psychology from Stanford University. She has taught at Cornell University and UCSB, and held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard University. She has also been a fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences twice. Her research encompasses a wide range of topics including American foreign and defense policy, experimentation, national security intelligence, gender, social identity, cybersecurity, emotion and decision-making, and the biological and genetic bases of political behavior. She has authored six books, co-edited two volumes, and published over two hundred academic articles across various disciplines.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Social Science
• Law
• Psychology
• Engineering
• Economics
• Engineering ethics
• Social psychology
• Positive economics

Selected publications

• On the scientific study of small samples: Challenges confronting quantitative and qualitative methodologies

  The Leadership Quarterly · 2023-02-14 · 59 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Ethics in field experimentation: A call to establish new standards to protect the public from unwanted manipulation and real harms

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 54 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  In 1966, Henry Beecher published his foundational paper "Ethics and Clinical Research," bringing to light unethical experiments that were routinely being conducted by leading universities and government agencies. A common theme was the lack of voluntary consent. Research regulations surrounding laboratory experiments flourished after his work. More than half a century later, we seek to follow in his footsteps and identify a new domain of risk to the public: certain types of field experiments. Th…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Key individuals catalyse intergroup violence

  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · 2022-04-04 · 34 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Intergroup violence is challenging to understand: why do individuals cooperate to harm members of other groups when they themselves may be killed or injured? Despite progress in understanding the evolutionary and proximate mechanisms that underlie violence, we still have little insight into the processes that lead to the emergence of coalitionary aggression. We argue that an overlooked component is the presence of individuals who have a crucial role in initiating violence. In instigatin…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Examining American attitudes toward vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of negative and positive rights

  Politics and the Life Sciences · 2023-01-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Abstract We examine the likely acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine in the period prior to political polarization around vaccine mandates. Two representative cross-sectional surveys of 1,000 respondents were fielded in August and December 2020. The surveys included items about the COVID-19 vaccine and vaccine mandates. Respondents self-identifying as liberal were the least likely to believe the vaccine had undisclosed harmful effects ( p < .001), conservatives were the most likely ( p < .001…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How the United States lost the “forever war”

  Journal of Strategic Studies · 2024-02-19 · 2 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  The recent withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan ended twenty years of military conflict begun after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. By almost every reasonable definition, the United States lost this conflict. Such an outcome should not have been likely given the resources and military might of the United States against non-state actors and lesser developed countries. Here we provide an examination of how and why America lost the war on terror in order to better understand how America en…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Peter Hatemi

  Pennsylvania State University

  55 shared

• Dustin Tingley

  Harvard University Press

  49 shared

• Rick K. Wilson

  43 shared

• Jon Pevehouse

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  36 shared

• George Mason

  Royal North Shore Hospital

  36 shared

• Kenton Worcester

  36 shared

• Diana Owen

  Georgetown University

  36 shared

• Steven B. Smith

  36 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Political Science

  Stanford University

• M.A., Psychology

  Stanford University

Awards & honors

• Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Similar researchers at Brown University

• John N. Friedmanh-35
• Mark Blythh-32
• Patrick Hellerh-28