Meagan Docherty

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
B.A., The College of New Jersey
M.A., Ph.D., Rutgers University-Newark

Phone: (419) 372-4939
Email: mdocher@bgsu.edu
Office: Room 259, Psychology Building
Lab Page: N/A
CV: DOC

Taking Graduate Students? Yes
Sponsoring Undergraduate Research? Yes

Research Interests:

My research broadly examines the development of aggressive and antisocial attitudes and behavior from childhood through young adulthood, as well as individual and contextual risk and protective factors. I am focused more specifically on two main topics: 1) predictors of gun use and 2) the development of callous-unemotional traits. I focus on exposure to violence and trauma and aspects of the caregiving environment, such as parental warmth and rejection, as important factors in the development of aggression and antisocial attitudes. Through this work I have leveraged longitudinal datasets and advanced quantitative methods to model trajectories of callousness over time as well as within-person predictors of callous-unemotional traits and handgun carrying.

Selected Publications:

Docherty, M., Boxer, P., Huesmann, L. R., Bushman, B. J., Anderson, C. A., Gentile, D. A., & Dubow, E. F. (2023). Within-person bidirectional associations over time between parenting and youths’ callousness. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2023.2188554

Docherty, M., Decrop, R., McManamon, B., Boxer, P., Dubow, E. F., & Huesmann, L. R. (2023). Exposure to violence predicts callous-unemotional traits and aggression in adolescence in the context of persistent ethnic-political conflict and violence. Aggressive Behavior, 49(6), 655-668. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.22103

Docherty, M., Kubik, J., & Drawve, G. (2023). Examining predictors of suicide by firearm in young, middle, and late adulthood. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1111/sltb.13035

Docherty, M., Sweeten, G., Craig, T., Yang, V. J. H., Decrop, R., Beardslee, J., Piquero, A., Clark, C., & Pardini, D. (2020). Prevalence and risk factors associated with carrying a gun to school during adolescence: A statewide study of middle and high school students. Journal of School Violence, 19(1), 35-47. https://doi.org/10.1080/15388220.2019.1703718

Docherty, M., Beardslee, J., Byrd, A. L., Yang, V. J. H., & Pardini, D. (2019). Developmental trajectories of interpersonal callousness from childhood to adolescence as predictors of antisocial behavior and psychopathic features in young adulthood. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 128(7), 700-709. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000449

Docherty, M., Mulvey, E., Beardslee, J., Sweeten, G., & Pardini, D. (2019). Drug dealing and gun carrying go hand in hand: Examining how juvenile offenders’ gun carrying changes before and after drug dealing spells across 84 months. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 36, 993-1015. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-019-09442-9

Courses Taught:

• PSYC 3040 Psychology of Adolescent Development (undergraduate)
  
• PSYC 3100 Lifespan Developmental Psychology (undergraduate)
  
• PSYC 7370 Lifespan Development (graduate)
  
• PSYC 7800 Longitudinal Modeling (graduate)