George R. Goethals Professor, E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Chair Curriculum Vitae Richmond Research Institute Profile

Social psychologist George R. Goethals joined the Jepson School faculty in 2006. His current research focuses on presidential leadership and peer interaction and performance.

Before joining the Jepson faculty as holder of the E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professorship in Leadership Studies, he held academic and administrative appointments at Williams College, the University of Virginia, and Princeton University among others.

At Williams College, Goethals served as the Chair of the Psychology Department for 11 years, Acting Dean of the faculty, Provost, and finally founder and Chair of the Program in Leadership Studies. He also served on and chaired numerous academic, administrative and search committees. At Williams Goethals most recently held the Dennis Meenan ’54 Third Century Chair in Leadership Studies. Since 1970 he has worked closely with Dr. James MacGregor Burns, a political scientist who some 25 years ago, first began exploring “leadership” as a complex system of social processes and human interactions. When Burns first raised the possibility of a leadership program at Williams, Goethals was a leader in that discussion, resulting in a leadership studies program at Williams, launched in 1997-98.

In addition to his collegiate appointments, Goethals has also served as an editor, or on the editorial board of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and The Leadership Quarterly.

Goethals’ research has focused particularly on social comparison processes, attribution, attitudes, the psychology of college student interaction and perceptions of college finances.

He has presented many papers through addresses, forums, and symposiums. He also has published numerous textbooks, chapters, and refereed articles in scholarly journals including “Understanding Social Psychology,” “Social Comparison and Peer Effects at an Elite College,” and “Social comparison theory: Psychology from the lost and found” and “Theories of Presidential Leadership” for the Annual Review of Psychology.

Goethals has received four research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health for his work on the studies of attribution theory and responses to social support and the role of similarity in social influence processes.

Goethals is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and a member of the American Psychological Society, the Eastern Psychological Association, the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, and the Society of Personality and Social Psychology.

Courses and Syllabi

• Theories and Models of Leadership [Syllabus]

Publications

• Goethals, G.R. (2005). Theories of Presidential Leadership. Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 56, pp. 545-570.
• Goethals, G.R. (2005). Nonverbal behavior and political leadership. In R. E. Riggio and R.S. Feldman (eds.) Applications of Nonverbal Communication. Pp. 95-115. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Goethals, G.R. (2005). The psychodynamics of leadership: Freud’s insights and their vicissitudes. In Messick, D. M. & Kramer, R. (eds.) The Psychology of Leadership: New Perspectives and Research. Pp. 97-112. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Norton, M.I., & Goethals, G.R. (2004). "Spin (and Pitch) Doctors: Campaign Strategies in Televised Political Debates." Political Behavior, 26, 227-248.
• Goethals, G.R. (2004). Phillips, Sam. In Goethals, G.R., Sorenson, G.J., & Burns, J.M. (Eds.) (2004). Encyclopedia of Leadership, Volume 3, pp. 1192-1195. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
• Sorenson, G.J. & Goethals, G.R. (2004). Leadership Theories: Overview. In Goethals, G.R., Sorenson, G.J., & Burns, J.M. (Eds.) (2004). Encyclopedia of Leadership, Volume 2, pp. 867-874. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
• Goethals, G.R. (2004) Kennedy, John F. In Goethals, G.R., Sorenson, G.J., & Burns, J.M. (Eds.) (2004). Encyclopedia of Leadership, Volume 2, pp. 789-792. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
• Goethals, G.R., Sorenson, G.J. & Burns, J.M. (Eds.) (2004) Encyclopedia of Leadership, Volumes 1-4. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
• Goethals, G.R., Hurshman, L.C., Sischy, A.C., Winston, G.C., Zhelev, G., & Zimmerman, D.J. (2004) Who cares?: how students view faculty and other adults in U.S. higher education. Discussion paper 67: The Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education.
• Goethals, G.R. (2003). A century of social psychology. In Hogg, M.A. & Cooper, J. (eds.) Sage Handbook of Social Psychology. London: Sage Publications.
• Klein, W. M. P., & Goethals, G. R. (2002). Social reality and self construction: A case of “bounded irrationality?” Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 24, 105-114.
• Goethals, G.R. (2001) Comment on the impact, personal and professional, of J.M. Burns. The Leadership Quarterly, 12, 122-123.
• Goethals, G.R. (2001). Peer effects, gender, and intellectual performance among students at a highly selective college: a social comparison analysis. Discussion paper 61: The Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education.
• Goethals, G.R. (2000). Social comparison and peer effects at an elite college. Discussion paper 55: The Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education.
• Goethals, G.R., & Klein, W.M. (2000). Interpreting and inventing social reality: attributional and constructive elements in social comparison. In J. Suls & L. Wheeler (Eds.) The Handbook of Social Comparison: Theory and Research. New York: Plenum, pp. 23-44.
• Worchel, S., Cooper, J., Goethals, G. R., & Olson, J. M. (2000). Understanding Social Psychology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
• Goethals, G. R., & Frantz, C. M. (1999). Subsidy Shock: Reframing Judgments of College Sticker Prices. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 21 167-175.

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