Department of Psychological Sciences and
College of Arts and Sciences
Heath Demaree, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Case Western Reserve University, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Cognitive Science. He earned his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Virginia Tech.
Dr. Demaree's research focuses on the interaction between emotional ("hot") and cognitive ("cold") processing, with particular interest in "exploration" versus "exploitation" decision-making, emotion regulation, and how emotions shape decision-making preferences.
At CWRU, he teaches Personality Psychology, Physiological Psychology, Emotion and Emotion Regulation, and graduate-level Physiological Foundations of Behavior.
Dr. Demaree has authored scores of peer-reviewed publications spanning emotion regulation, decision-making, personality, neuropsychology, and psychophysiology. His work has appeared in Nature Human Behaviour, Emotion, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Biological Psychology, Brain and Cognition, and Cognition and Emotion, among others. His contributions have been recognized with numerous honors, including Fellow status in the Association for Psychological Science, the Carl F. Wittke Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the John S. Diekhoff Award for Distinguished Graduate Teaching, and the J. Bruce Jackson, M.D. Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Mentoring.
Photo credit: Grace Demaree
Research Information
Research Interests
Generally speaking, Dr. Demaree’s research interests involve the interaction between emotional (“hot”) and cognitive (“cold”) processing. Although his particular interests are described below, he supports the work of graduate students who fall within this relatively broad research umbrella.
Research Projects
Dr. Demaree is currently most interested in “exploration” versus “exploitation” decision-making, and understanding how personality variables and decision-making preferences (such as delay of gratification discount rate) may relate to exploration-exploitation decision-making. He would ultimately like to understand how different emotions (e.g., fear, happiness, etc.) affect exploration-exploitation decision-making preferences. Although the great preponderance of his research involves humans, he is also interested in how these constructs may work in other animals, too.