Rate My Professor Jackie Hunter

Associate Professor Jackie Hunter holds a position in the Department of Psychology within the Sciences Division at the University of Otago. He earned his BSc and DPhil from the University of Ulster (Coleraine, Northern Ireland). Joining the Department of Psychology in 1994, Hunter has taught social psychology throughout his tenure. He has authored over 40 scholarly papers and supervised more than 40 PhD, masters, and honours students, contributing significantly to the training of the next generation of psychologists.

Hunter's research focuses on social identity, self-esteem, prejudice, and intergroup relations, with particular emphasis on social identity, self-esteem, and intergroup discrimination. His investigations examine how various forms of intergroup discrimination—such as group-favouring evaluations, biases in resource allocation, subtle and blatant prejudices—affect global, collective, and domain-specific self-esteem. He also explores how threats to self-esteem, including negative feedback, failure, and perceived negative evaluations from outgroups, influence subsequent discriminatory patterns, finding links to collective and domain-specific self-esteem. Additional work addresses motivational factors like belongingness, meaning, anxiety, and perceptions of control in relation to intergroup discrimination. Key publications include 'Implicit anti-fat bias in physical educators: physical attributes, ideology and socialization' (O'Brien, Hunter, & Banks, 2007, International Journal of Obesity); 'Reducing anti-fat prejudice in preservice health students: a randomized trial' (O'Brien et al., 2010, Obesity); 'Somewhere I belong: Long-term increases in adolescents’ resilience are predicted by perceived belonging to the in-group' (Scarf et al., 2016); 'Social identity is associated with the long-term growth of personal efficacy in an Adventure Education Program (AEP)' (Hunter et al., 2025, Group Dynamics); and 'Everyday norms have become more permissive over time and vary across cultures' (Eriksson et al., 2025, Communications Psychology). Hunter has received teaching recognition, including the Otago University Students' Association top lecturer award in 2013 and Senior Teacher of the Year in 2017. He serves as a section board member for Behavioral Sciences (MDPI) and holds editorial roles with publishers such as Nova Science.