Contact Information:
102 Gilmer Hall
P.O. Box 400400
Charlottesville, VA 22904
phone: 434-243-8187
email: tenney at virginia dot edu

Research interests:

When do we trust and believe other people?
What makes some people more likeable than others?

I study how individuals' meta-cognitions and self-insights affect interpersonal judgments. Some results so far suggest that accurately assessing the quality of one's own memories increases subjective credibility.

I am currently a fourth year doctoral student in Social Psychology at the University of Virginia. I graduated from Colgate University in 2004.

Links:

• University of Virginia Psychology
• LIFE Academy at the International Max Planck Research School
• The Spellman Lab
• My UVA Psych Department webpage

Tenney, E. R., MacCoun, R. J., Spellman, B. A., & Hastie, R. (2007). Calibration trumps confidence as a basis for witness credibility. Psychological Science, 18, 46-50.

Websites that discuss this research:

• Science's Editor's Choice
• BPS Research Digest
• UC Berkeley News
• Deliberations
• Psychology and Crime News

Publications:

Tenney, E. R., Spellman, B. A., & MacCoun, R. J. (2008). The benefits of knowing what you know (and what you don't): How calibration affects credibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1368-1375.

Tenney, E. R., Cleary, H. M. D., & Spellman, B. A. (in press). Unpacking the doubt in "beyond a reasonable doubt:" Plausible alternative stories increase not guilty verdicts. Basic and Applied Social Psychology.