Rate My Professor Robert Morrison

Robert G. Morrison is Associate Professor of Psychology and Undergraduate Program Director for Neuroscience at Loyola University Chicago, where he joined the faculty as Assistant Professor in 2009 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2016. He directs the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (CAN) Laboratory. Morrison earned his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004, M.A. in Cognitive Psychology from UCLA in 2000, M.A. in Experimental Psychology from Cleveland State University in 1998, and B.S. in Chemistry from Wheaton College in 1988. Prior to Loyola, he held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University from 2007 to 2009.

Morrison's research explores how the brain supports human thinking, with foci on analogical reasoning and its development across the lifespan, executive functions, emotional influences on cognitive control, rational thinking modulated by open-mindedness, and creative behavior. His studies examine impacts of media violence exposure and video gaming on inhibition, using EEG/ERP, brain stimulation techniques like tACS and tDCS, neuropsychology, and computational modeling with participants from children to older adults. He has co-edited the Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning (2005) and Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning (2012) with Keith J. Holyoak. Select publications include 'The Human Affectome' (PsyArXiv, 2022), 'Individual differences in relational learning and analogical reasoning: A computational model of longitudinal change' (Frontiers in Psychology, 2018), 'Cool, callous, and in control: Superior inhibitory control in frequent players of video games with violent content' (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2017), and 'Compensatory processing during rule-based category learning in older adults' (Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 2016). Morrison has received the Edwin T. and Vivijeanne F. Sujack Award for Teaching Excellence (2013), NIH National Research Service Awards, and grants as principal investigator including from the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation for Alzheimer's disease research. He has mentored students through Loyola's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program and contributed to graduate faculty in psychology and medicine.