About

Joanne F. Zinger is a Professor of Teaching at the UCI School of Social Ecology, within the Department of Psychology. She completed her Ph.D. in Social/Personality Psychology at the University of California, Riverside in 2005 and conducted post-doctoral studies at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, CA in 2007. Since joining UCI in 2007, she has received numerous awards for her teaching, including the UCI Professor of the Year Award in 2024, and has been recognized multiple times as the Social Ecology Professor of the Year and for fostering undergraduate research. Her teaching portfolio includes a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses such as Introduction to Psychology, Research Design, Social Psychology, and Human Sexuality, among others. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she serves as the Director of the Post-Baccalaureate Program in Psychology and has held several departmental leadership roles, including Director of Graduate Recruitment and Director of the Social Ecology Honors Program. She actively mentors undergraduate and post-baccalaureate students on research projects, with many students progressing to graduate programs in fields such as developmental psychology, clinical psychology, social work, and other health and social sciences.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Social Science
• Linguistics
• Psychology
• Mathematics education
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• It's in the Syllabus: The Relationship Between Syllabi Word Use and Teaching Evaluations

  Journal of Language and Social Psychology · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Psychology
  • Social Science

  The authors analyzed 1,472 course syllabi written by 611 professors to determine whether communion-related and/or agency-related word use in professors’ syllabi predicted those same professors’ end-of-semester teaching evaluations. Linguistic inquiry and word count (LIWC) analyses revealed that professors who used more communal language—including third person plural pronouns (e.g., we), social words (e.g., discussion), and positive emotion words (e.g., please)—received significantly higher teaching evaluations, but agentic language did not significantly predict evaluation scores.

  PublisherDOI

• Late electrophysiological potentials and emotion in schizophrenia: A meta-analytic review

  Schizophrenia Research · 2019-07-17 · 28 citations

  reviewOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Partisan Bias and Its Discontents

  Perspectives on Psychological Science · 2019-03-01 · 54 citations

  letterOpen accessSenior author

  Baron and Jost (this issue, p. 292) present three critiques of our meta-analysis demonstrating similar levels of partisan bias in liberals and conservatives: (a) that the studies we examined were biased toward finding symmetrical bias among liberals and conservatives, (b) that the studies we examined do not measure partisan bias but rather rational Bayesian updating, and (c) that social psychology is not biased in favor of liberals but rather toward creating false equivalencies. We respond in turn that (a) the included studies covered a wide variety of issues at the core of contemporary political conflict and fairly compared bias by establishing conditions under which both liberals and conservatives would have similar motivations and opportunities to demonstrate bias; (b) we carefully selected studies that were least vulnerable to Bayesian counterexplanation, and most scientists and laypeople consider these studies demonstrations of bias; and (c) there is reason to be vigilant about liberal bias in social psychology, but this does not preclude concerns about other possible biases, all of which threaten good science. We close with recommendations for future research and urge researchers to move beyond broad generalizations of political differences that are insensitive to time and context.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• At Least Bias Is Bipartisan: A Meta-Analytic Comparison of Partisan Bias in Liberals and Conservatives

  Perspectives on Psychological Science · 2018-05-31 · 536 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Both liberals and conservatives accuse their political opponents of partisan bias, but is there empirical evidence that one side of the political aisle is indeed more biased than the other? To address this question, we meta-analyzed the results of 51 experimental studies, involving over 18,000 participants, that examined one form of partisan bias-the tendency to evaluate otherwise identical information more favorably when it supports one's political beliefs or allegiances than when it challenges those beliefs or allegiances. Two hypotheses based on previous literature were tested: an asymmetry hypothesis (predicting greater partisan bias in conservatives than in liberals) and a symmetry hypothesis (predicting equal levels of partisan bias in liberals and conservatives). Mean overall partisan bias was robust ( r = .245), and there was strong support for the symmetry hypothesis: Liberals ( r = .235) and conservatives ( r = .255) showed no difference in mean levels of bias across studies. Moderator analyses reveal this pattern to be consistent across a number of different methodological variations and political topics. Implications of the current findings for the ongoing ideological symmetry debate and the role of partisan bias in scientific discourse and political conflict are discussed.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The effects of feedback on energy conservation: A meta-analysis.

  Psychological Bulletin · 2015-01-01 · 346 citations

  review

  Feedback has been studied as a strategy for promoting energy conservation for more than 30 years, with studies reporting widely varying results. Literature reviews have suggested that the effectiveness of feedback depends on both how and to whom it is provided; yet variations in both the type of feedback provided and the study methodology have made it difficult for conclusions to be drawn. The current article analyzes past theoretical and empirical research on both feedback and proenvironmental behavior to identify unresolved issues, and utilizes a meta-analysis of 42 feedback studies published between 1976 and 2010 to test a set of hypotheses about when and how feedback about energy usage is most effective. Results indicate that feedback is effective overall, r = .071, p < .001, but with significant variation in effects (r varied from -.080 to .480). Several treatment variables were found to moderate this relationship, including frequency, medium, comparison message, duration, and combination with other interventions (e.g., goal, incentive). Overall, results provide further evidence of feedback as a promising strategy to promote energy conservation and suggest areas in which future research should focus to explore how and for whom feedback is most effective.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Eric E. Chen

  University of California, Irvine

  1 shared

• Brittany S. Liu

  Kalamazoo College

  1 shared

• Elizabeth A. Martin

  University of California, Irvine

  1 shared

• Sean P. Wojcik

  University of California, Irvine

  1 shared

• Drew H. Bailey

  University of California, Irvine

  1 shared

• Rebecca Ford

  1 shared

• Beth Karlin

  1 shared

• Charlie C. Su

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Campus Village Professor of the Month (2009)
• Social Ecology Student Association Professor of the Quarter…
• Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Fostering Undergraduate…
• UCI Lecturer of the Year Award (2012)
• UCI Yearbook/Senior Class Outstanding Professor in the Schoo…