Rebecca Schlegel
Texas A&M University
Rebecca (Becca) Schlegel is a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M University. She is a co- PI in the TAMU Existential Psychology Collaboratory and an associate director of the TAMU Institute for Technology Infused Learning. Becca holds a PhD from the University of Missouri and a BS from Kansas State University. Becca’s research is in social and personality psychology, with a focus on existential psychology. She studies issues related to self/identity, authenticity, and meaning in life. Much of her work has focused specifically on the idea of a “true self” and the ways in which people use beliefs surrounding their avowed true self to imbue their life with meaning. This work tries to move beyond the question of whether the true self is something that is ontologically real, and instead examines the nature of true self beliefs, the origin of true self beliefs, and the functional importance of the true self-concept in everyday life. This work has been supported by the John Templeton Foundation.
In recent years, Becca has worked with education researchers, computer scientists, and engineers in an interdisciplinary effort to develop and test interventions that aim to foster an academic sense of self among students in elementary, middle, and high school. The goal of this work is to “plant the seed” that being a scientist or engineer may be part of one’s true self. This work is motivated by the premise that it is important to cultivate this type of self-concept early in life so that it can guide behavior in the future. These interventions utilize “making” to infuse state mandated science curricula with hands-on experiences with technology. This lets students see that engineering can be fun, useful, and something they themselves can do. This work has received over $4 million in external research funding on collaborative grants from the National Science Foundation.
Becca currently serves as an associate editor at the Journal of Research in Personality and Collabra: Psychology. She has published over 45 peer reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings.