Rate My Professor Patrick Markey

Patrick M. Markey, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Villanova University, where he joined as Assistant Professor in 2003, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2009, and advanced to full Professor in 2015. Prior appointments include Visiting Assistant Professor at Rutgers University (2002-2003), Lecturer at University of California, Riverside (2002), and Associate in Psychology there (2000-2001). He directs the Interpersonal Research Group, investigating how behavioral tendencies develop and manifest in social settings. Markey holds a B.A. in Psychology with honors from California State University, Fullerton (1997), M.A. in Psychology from University of California, Riverside (1999), and Ph.D. in Psychology from University of California, Riverside (2002), with primary emphases in social and personality psychology and quantitative psychology.

Markey's research specializations encompass interpersonal complementarity and behavior, personality assessment, romantic relationships and conflict resolution, deception detection in contexts like 911 homicide calls, and media effects including violent video games on aggression and social media on adolescent mental health. His work has exceeded 5,000 citations. Key publications feature books such as Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games is Wrong (2017, co-authored with C.J. Ferguson) and F*ck Divorce: A Science-Based Guide to Piecing Yourself Back Together After Your Life Implodes (2021, co-authored with E.B. Slotter), alongside seminal papers including "Complementarity of interpersonal behavior in dyadic interactions" (2003, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin), "Vulnerability to violent video games: A review and integration of personality research" (2010, Review of General Psychology), and recent studies on linguistic cues in deception and social media correlations with mental health. Markey has earned multiple Villanova University Summer Research Fellowships (2005, 2009, 2013, 2016) and Research Support Grants, the Chancellors Distinguished Fellowship from UC Riverside (1997-2002), and Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology Research Grant (2001). He served as President of the Society for Interpersonal Theory and Research (2011), Associate Editor of the Journal of Personality (2008-2015), and holds ongoing editorial board roles. His expertise includes testimony before Pennsylvania legislative committees on video game violence.