Tara MacDonald

My research interests fall into three main categories:

Health Decision-making. For most of my career, I have been interested in the application of social psychological research to health, particularly the decision whether to use a condom. When asked about their intentions to have intercourse without a condom, university students typically report that they would not engage in these behaviours. Accordingly, one might expect that the incidence of these health-risk behaviours would be relatively low. Instead, the incidence continues to be alarmingly high. The goal of my research is to examine why people engage in these behaviours that contradict their attitudes and intentions, even when doing so can have powerful negative consequences. I have studied how different factors (e.g., alcohol intoxication, reduced cognitive capacity, sexual arousal, and anticipated negative emotions) affect the decision whether to use a condom.

Romantic Relationships. I have recently become interested in assessing how attachment anxiety and rejection interact to affect health outcomes. A number of graduate students and I have assessed how attachment anxiety and rejection interact to affect eating behaviour (with Sandra Marques), condom use behaviour (with Leigh Turner), body image (with Erica Refling) and conflict and decision-making (with Valerie Murphy).

Attitudes. I am particularly interested in assessing how attitudinal ambivalence affects the stability and malleability of attitudes. More specifically, I am interested in assessing the different consequences of holding cross-dimension ambivalence (when opposing evaluations occur along different dimensions) and within-dimension ambivalence (when the opposing evaluations occur along the same dimension).