Richard Harris, Ph.D.

Contact Information

E-mail: rjharris@ksu.edu

 

 

Research Interests

As part of the Cognitive Psychology program, Dr. Harris' research examined issues involving language and cognition, primarily in the areas of psycholinguistics and mass communication. While some of his research has a strong applied component, other work is clearly basic research.

In addition to empirical research, Dr. Harris is the author of two textbooks in multiple editions and the editor of several books of readings. He also lead occasional community workshops on critical viewing, media literacy, and managing television in the home. He and his students have authored several book chapters on psychology and media.

Recent Representative Publications

Research Articles

Barlett, C.P., Branch, O., Rodeheffer, C., & Harris, R.J. (2009). How long do the short-term violent video game effects last? Aggressive Behavior, 35, 225-236.

Barlett, C.P., & Harris, R.J. (2008). The impact of body emphasizing video games on body image concerns in men and women. Sex Roles, 59, 586-601.

Barlett, C.P., Harris, R.J., & Baldassaro, R. (2007). The longer you play, the more hostile you feel: Examination of first person shooter video games and aggression during video game play. Aggressive Behavior, 33, 1-12.

Barlett, C.P., Harris, R.J., & Bruey, C. (2008). The effect of the amount of blood in a violent video game on aggression, hostility, and arousal. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 539-546.

Barlett, C.P., Smith, S.J., & Harris, R.J. (2006). The interference effect of men's handling of muscular action figures on a lexical decision task. Body Image, 3, 375-383.

Bonds-Raacke, J.M., Cady, E.T., Schlegel, R., Harris, R.J., & Firebaugh, L.C. (2007). Remembering gay/lesbian media characters: Can Ellen and Will improve attitudes toward homosexuals? Journal of Homosexuality, 53, (3), 19-34.

Cady, E.T., Harris, R.J., & Knappenberger, J.B. (2008). Using music to cue autobiographical memories of different lifetime periods. Psychology of Music, 36 (2), 157-177.

Friel, B.M., & Harris, R.J. (2004). Toward an empirical definition of cognateness: Translation elicitation in six languages. International Journal of Cognitive Technology, 9, 40-54.

Harris, R.J., Friel, B.M., & Mickelson, N.R. (2006). Attribution of discourse goals for using concrete- and abstract-tenor metaphors and similies with or without discourse context. Journal of Pragmatics, 38, 863-879.

Harris, R.J., Sanborn, F.W., Scott, C.L., Dodds, L., & Brandenburg, J.D. (2004). Autobiographical memories for seeing romantic movies on a date: Romance is not just for women. Media Psychology, 6, 257-284.

Harris, R.J., Hoekstra, S.J., Scott, C.L., Sanborn, F.W., Karafa, J.A., & Brandenburg, J.D. (2000). Young men's and women's different autobiographical memories of the experience of seeing frightening movies on a date. Media Psychology, 2, 245-268.

Harris, R.J., Tebbe, M.R., Leka, G.E., Garcia, R.C., & Erramouspe, R. (1999). Monolingual and bilingual memory for English and Spanish metaphors and similes. Metaphor and Symbol, 14, 1-16.

Harris, R.J., & Cook, L.G. (2011). How content and co-viewers elicit emotional discomfort in moviegoing experiences. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25, 850-861.

Harris, R.J., Werth, A.J., Bures, K.E., & Bartel, C.M. (2008). Social movie quoting: What, why, and how? Ciencias psicologicas, 2 (1), 35-45.

Hinkin, M.P., Harris, R.J., & Miranda, A.T. (2014). Verbal redundancy aids memory for filmed entertainment dialogue. Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, 148, 161-176.

Rai, M.K., Loschky, L.C., Harris, R.J., Peck, N.R., & Cook, L.G. (2011). Effects of stress and working memory capacity on foreign language readers' inferential processing during comprehension. Language Learning, 61, 187-218.

Wichman, A.L., Friel, B.M., & Harris, R.J. (2001). The effect of lexical, pragmatic, and morphological violations on reading time and deviance ratings of English and German sentences. Memory & Cognition, 29, 493-502.

Review Chapters

Harris, R.J., & Barlett, C.P. (2009). Effects of sex in the media. In J. Bryant and M.B. Oliver (Eds.) Media Effects: Advances in theory and research. (3rd ed.) (pp. 304-324) New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis.

Harris, R.J., Cady, E.T., & Tran, T.Q. (2006). Comprehension and memory. In J. Bryant and P. Vorderer (Eds.), Psychology of Entertainment. (pp. 71-84). Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Harris, R.J., Cady, E.T., & Barlett, C.P. (2007). Media. In F. Durso, R.S. Nickerson, S.T. Dumais, S. Lewandowsky, and T.J. Perfect (Eds.), (pp. 659-682), Handbook of Applied Cognition (2nd ed.). Chichester UK: John Wiley & Sons.

Textbooks

Harris, R.J. & Sanborn, F.W. (2014). A cognitive psychology of mass communication. (6th ed.). New York: Routledge.

Leahey, T.H., & Harris, R.J. (2001). Learning and cognition. (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Additional Information

Dr. Harris is married to Caprice Becker, a nurse at Medical Associates. They have three children, Clint (born 1989) and Natalie and Grady (twins born in 1991). Some of his hobbies are travel, reading, hiking, theater, genealogy, and stamp collecting. Also interested in cross-cultural issues, he has on past sabbaticals served as a Fulbright Visiting Professor in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Montevideo, Uruguay, as well as a term as a Visiting Scholar in New Zealand. Although born and raised in suburban Pittsburgh PA, Dr. Harris has come to love the smaller college-town life of Manhattan.