Rate My Professor Eric Day

Eric Day is a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Oklahoma, Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences. He serves as the coordinator for the doctoral program in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and was previously Chair of the Department. Day earned his B.S. in psychology from James Madison University, M.S. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Central Florida, and Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Texas A&M University. He joined the University of Oklahoma faculty in 2001. His research spans personnel psychology and organizational behavior, focusing on personnel assessment, selection, training and development, leadership, and group dynamics. Key interests include human performance and complex skill learning, with emphasis on individual differences in ability and motivation, cognitive and social processes, self-regulation, skill decay, skill adaptability, team training, team adaptability, group decision making, and simulations for leadership assessment and development such as assessment centers and situational judgment tests.

Day's contributions include editorial board service for Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Performance, and Small Group Research. Current projects examine leadership and team dynamics in team effectiveness, EEG measurement for self-regulation and skilled performance, distinctions between adaptive and routine performance via curiosity and emotions, and AI technologies' effects on job engagement and career development. He leads a $1.4 million FAA grant awarded in 2024 to study air traffic controller training and holds roles such as member of the OU Research Council and leadership in the Institute for Community and Society Transformation. Key publications encompass editorship of Individual and team skill decay: State of the science and implications for practice (2013); chapters including Skill decay: The science and practice of mitigating loss and enhancing retention in The Oxford Handbook of Expertise (2019) and Assessment centers in Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (2010); and articles such as Learner-controlled practice difficulty in the training of a complex task (Journal of Applied Psychology, 2013), Relationships between team ability composition, team mental models, and team performance (Journal of Applied Psychology, 2006), and Emotion-performance relationships in the acquisition and adaptation of a complex skill (Human Performance, in press).