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Dario Rodriguez has been teaching full time at the University of Dayton since 2012. He previously taught for John Jay College of Criminal Justice at The City University of New York (CUNY), and at Wright State University. He has taught a wide range of psychology courses, including Introductory Psychology, Social Psychology, Statistics, Experimental Psychology and Experimental Psychology and Law.

Faculty perspective

"When I entered college I was certain I was going to major in mathematics and physics. When I took Introductory Psychology in my freshman year, however, I learned that you could actually use math and the scientific method to understand how people behave. I switched my major to psychology and took as many psychology classes as I could. Social psychology stood out to me as extremely interesting, particularly because it is immediately applicable to everyday life. I was especially interested in the application of social psychological concepts to the criminal justice system, and began conducting research on these issues as an undergraduate. Since that time, I've conducted research on eyewitness psychology, juror decision-making, cognitive dissonance, and memory distortion.

In the classroom and in the laboratory, I try to emphasize the importance of a firm understanding of basic psychological theory and research methods in the investigation of practical applications and interventions."

Research interests

• Motivated social cognition - e.g., the relationship between cognitive dissonance and memory distortion
• Eyewitness psychology - e.g., eyewitness identifications and motivation, lineup administrator behavior and decision-making, implications for evidence preservation
• Juror decision-making - e.g., methods to sensitize jurors to variation in eyewitness evidence quality, pretrial publicity

Courses taught

• Introductory Psychology/General Psychology
• Statistics
• Research Methods/Experimental Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Forensic Psychology
• Experimental Psychology & Law

Selected publications

Rodriguez, D. N., & Berry, M. A. (2012). "Eyewitness science and the call for double-blind lineup administration." Journal of Criminology. doi: 10.1155/2013/530523

Rodriguez, D. N., & Berry, M. A. (2012). "The influence of administrator blindness on the recording of eyewitness identification decisions." Legal and Criminological Psychology. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8333.2012.02058.

Hammond, E. M., Berry, M. A., & Rodriguez, D. N. (2011). "The influence of rape myth acceptance, sexual attitudes, and belief in a just world on attributions of responsibility in a date rape scenario." Legal and Criminological Psychology, 16, 242-252. doi: 10.1348/135532510X499887

Rodriguez, D. N., & Berry, M. A. (2009). "Dissonance reduction in jurors' post-verdict decisions." American Journal of Forensic Psychology, 27, 5-18.

Selected Presentations

Zimmerman, D., Rodriguez, D., Nicholson, A., & Penrod, S. (2013, March). "The roles of conformity prejudice and anticipated social consequences in the biasing effects of pretrial publicity." Poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychology-Law Society, Portland, OR.

Rodriguez, D. N., Berry, M. A., Glaser, M. K., & Timbrook, J. (2012, March). "Lineup administrator blindness affects the recording of eyewitness identification decisions." Poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychology-Law Society, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Rhead, L. M., Rodriguez, D. N., Korobeynikov, V., Yip, J. H., & Kovera, M. B. (2011, June). "The effects of lineup administrator influence and mortality salience on witness identification accuracy." Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, New York, NY.

Rodriguez, D. N., & Berry, M. A. (2010, March). "Jurors' causal and counterfactual evaluations of factors affecting eyewitness evidence." Poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychology-Law Society: Vancouver, BC, Canada.

D'Antuono, D., Rodriguez, D. N., & Gottdiener, W. H. (2010, January) "The defensive processes of alcohol intoxication: A meta-analysis of research testing the validity of alcohol myopia theory." Poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association: New York, NY.