Curtis Puryear
Assistant Professor
Curtis Puryear is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. His research examines how morality shapes social and political life in the digital age. Drawing on large-scale text data, natural language processing, and social psychological theory, he studies how moral concerns spread through online networks, influence polarization, and guide collective attention toward social issues.
Before joining UNCW, Dr. Puryear was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, where he worked with Drs. William Brady and Nour Kteily, and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he worked with Dr. Kurt Gray in the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding. He earned his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of South Florida, where he was advised by Dr. Joseph Vandello.
His work has been published in leading journals such as PNAS, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and his work has been featured in Scientific American, Psychology Today, and USA Today. To learn more about his research and publications, visit www.curtispuryear.com.
Education
Ph.D. in Psychology, University of South Florida
M.S. in Psychology, East Texas A&M University
B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy, Transylvania University
Specialization in Teaching
Dr. Puryear specializes in teaching social psychology, statistics for the behavioral sciences, and research methods. His teaching emphasizes hands-on learning, critical thinking, and the connection between theory and data. He integrates examples from real-world datasets—including social media, experiments, and surveys—to help students understand how psychological concepts manifest in everyday behavior. He also incorporates open science practices, reproducible workflows, and data visualization to prepare students for research in psychology and related fields.
Research Interests
Dr. Puryear studies morality, politics, and social media through the lens of computational social science. His work investigates how moral psychology shape group conflict, cooperation, and collective behavior. Using large-scale text corpora and machine learning methods, he examines how moral beleifs evolve over time, spreads across online communities, and influences political polarization. He is also interested in interventions that promote mutual understanding in polarized contexts, as well as the broader psychological and societal consequences of algorithmic amplification and digital communication.