Brian Bowdle
Associate Professor - Cognitive Psychology
- B.A., University of Michigan
- M.A., Ph.D., Northwestern University
Pew Teaching Excellence Award 2022
Office: 2311 Au Sable Hall
Phone: (616) 331-2420
Email: [email protected]
Specialization
Cognitive Psychology
Courses Taught
PSY 101 – Introductory Psychology
PSY 311 – Controversial Issues in Psychology
PSY 325 – Educational Psychology
PSY 357 – Psychology of Language
PSY 492 – Psychology Capstone (Advanced General)
Research Interests
My primary area of research is psycholinguistics, with particular attention paid to the comprehension and production of figurative language – especially metaphor – and the relationships between grammatical and conceptual structures. Other areas of interest include moral psychology, political psychology, and the ways in which human behavior is driven by the interplay between evolutionary and cultural forces.
Selected Publications
(Some of these papers can be downloaded for personal use. If you would like permission to use a reprint for a book or a course pack, please contact the publisher.)
Buss, D. M., Durkee, P. K., Shackelford, T. K., Bowdle, B. F., Schmitt, D. P., Brase, G. L., Choe, J. C., & Trofimova, I. (2020). Human status criteria: Sex differences and similarities across 14 nations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000206
Bowdle, B. F. (2019). Psychological perspectives on metaphor. In D. S. Dunn (Ed.), Oxford Bibliographies in Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Krennmayr, T., Bowdle, B. F., Mulder, G., & Steen, G. J. (2014). Economic competition is like auto racing: Building metaphorical schemas when reading text. Metaphor and the Social World, 4, 65-89. pdf
Gentner, D., & Bowdle, B. F. (2008). Metaphor as structure-mapping. In R. Gibbs (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought (pp. 109-128). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. pdf
Bowdle, B. F., & Gentner, D. (2005). The career of metaphor. Psychological Review, 112, 193-216. pdf
Bowdle, B. F., & Medin, D. L. (2001). Reference point reasoning and comparison asymmetries. In Proceedings of the Twenty-third Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 116-121). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. pdf
Bowdle, B. F., & Gentner, D. (1997). Informativity and asymmetry in comparisons. Cognitive Psychology, 34, 244-286. pdf
Cohen, D., Nisbett, R. E., Bowdle, B. F., & Schwarz, N. E. (1996). Insult, aggression, and the Southern culture of honor: An experimental ethnography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 945-960. pdf
Bowdle, B. F., & Ward, G. (1995). Generic demonstratives. In Proceedings of the Twenty-first Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 32-43). Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society. pdf