Charles T. (Chuck) Hill

I am a Professor of Psychology and Affiliate in Sociology at Whittier College.I have a strong interdisciplinary perspective, with a PhD in Social Psychology from Harvard University and master's degrees in both Sociology and Physics from the University of Washington.

I am very interested in other cultures. I have travelled throughout Europe and have participated in exchange programs and study tours in Denmark, Russia, Egypt, Japan, China, and Mexico. I have taught summer school in Turkey, attended conferences in England, Peru, and China, and also traveled in Thailand and South Korea. In the spring of 2002 I taught on Semester at Sea, with fieldtrips in Cuba, Brazil, South Africa, Mauritius, India, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, and Japan.

Every day I wear a different item of foreign clothing in my Introductory Psychology class and tell a story about it to introduce other cultures. I also discuss cross-cultural examples in my Social Psychology course.

In the fall of 1998 I developed a new course called Diverse Identities. It examines theory and research on processes of identity formation and change. Topics include gender, ethnic, racial, national, religious, social class, place, school, occupational, sexual, family, health, age, political, and other identities. The course analyzes stigma, prejudice, discrimination, and conflict from a global perspective.

I previously taught an interdisciplinary course called "What is Reality?" in which I explored comparative world religions, philosophy of science, and the social psychology of identity and beliefs. I have also participated in many "paired courses" in which professors in two different disciplines coordinate their syllabi and attend each other's classes.

I have conducted a great deal of research on relationship development, including friendship, dating, and marriage. I have also cross-cultural research on attitudes about gender roles and marriage. I developed a Multiple Identities questionnaire to study multiple dimensions of the various identities that people have. A unique feature of the MIQ is asking respondents to indicate to what extent they are members of each category on a scale of 0 to 8 instead of simply checking one or several categories (e.g., for ethnicity).