Dr. Andrew Christy

• PSY101 — General Psychology
• PSY205 — Experimental Design
• PSY340 — Personality Psychology
• PSY361 — Social Psychology
• PSY409 — History/Systems of Psychology

My research interests revolve around how people experience meaning in their lives — including both cognitive meaning (i.e., explaining events and experiences) and existential meaning (i.e., feeling that one’s life matters and has some purpose). Much of my work has examined people’s intuitions and judgments about the “true self” and personal authenticity, which play roles in both cognitive and existential meaning-making. At Plattsburgh, I plan to continue these lines of work while also broadening my focus to examine other meaning-making processes (such as how people use their social and political worldviews to find meaning) and how these processes affect people’s broader experiences of happiness and psychological well-being.

• Christy, A. G., Schlegel, R. J., & Cimpian, A. (2019). Why do people believe in a “true self”? The role of essentialist reasoning about personal identity and the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117, 386-416.
• Rivera, G. N., Christy, A. G., Kim, J., Schlegel, R. J., & Hicks, J. A. (2019). Understanding the relationship between perceived authenticity and well-being. Review of General Psychology, 23, 113-126.
• Schlegel, R. J., Chu, S. L., Chen, K., Deuermeyer, E., Christy, A. G., & Quek, F. (2019). Making in the classroom: Longitudinal evidence of increases in self-efficacy and STEM possible selves over time. Computers and Education, 142.
• Kim, J., Christy, A. G., Rivera, G. N., Schlegel, R. J., & Hicks, J. A. (2018). Following one’s true self and the sacredness of cultural values. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 76, 100-103.
• Kim, J., Christy, A. G., Schlegel, R. J., Donnellan, M. B., & Hicks, J. A. (2018). Existential ennui: The reciprocal relationship between self-alienation and academic amotivation among college students. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9, 853-862.
• Christy, A. G., Rivera, G. N., & Schlegel, R. J. (2019). Authenticity and the True Self in Religion and Spirituality. In Vail, K. E., & Routledge, C. (eds.), The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. New York: Elsevier.
• Christy, A. G., Rivera, G. N., Chen, K., & Hicks, J. A. (2018). Existential meaning in life and positive psychological functioning. In Dunn, D. S. (ed.), Positive Psychology: Established and Emerging Issues. New York: Routledge.

•  Chu, S., Schlegel, R. J., Quek, F., Christy, A. G., & Chen, K. (2017). ‘I make, therefore I am’: The effects of curriculum aligned making on children’s self-identity. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’17). Denver, CO. ACM.
• Christy, A. G. (January 2017). The Morality-Identity Association in Self-Perception, Person Perception, and Moral Judgment. Invited talk at the Self and Identity pre-conference at the 18th annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, San Antonio, TX.
• Christy, A. G., Schlegel, R. J., & Cimpian, A. (June 2016). Belief in true selves as an instance of psychological essentialism. Talk at the 42nd annual meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology
• Christy, A. G., & Schlegel, R. J. (February 2019). Purpose, Morality, and Personhood: Teleological and Normative Processes in Judgments About Identity. Poster presented at the 20th annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (Existential Psychology Preconference), Portland, OR.
• Christy, A. G., Schlegel, R. J., & Donnellan, M. B. (March 2018). The Beliefs About Life Meaning Scale: Development and Preliminary Validation. Poster presented at the 19th annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Atlanta, GA.
• Christy, A. G., Seto, E., Schlegel, R. J., Vess, M., & Hicks, J. (January 2017). Self-Perceptions of Immorality Disrupt Self-knowledge. Poster presented at the 18th annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, San Antonio, TX.

• Fasken Distinguished Graduate Student Teaching Award, TAMU College of Liberal Arts, 2018
• Heritage Dissertation Award, Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology, 2018
• Summer Professional Development Award, Texas A&M Psychology Department, 2017
• Departmental Travel Grant, Texas A&M Psychology Department, 2017

• International Society for Self and Identity
• American Psychological Association
• Society for Personality and Social Psychology
• Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society
• Psi Chi International Honor Society in Psychology
• Association for Psychological Science