Biography

Engaging social psychological concepts and theories as tools to understand social life.

Jessica L. Collett joined the UCLA faculty in 2018. She is a social psychologist, primarily interested in small group processes, identity, and the relationship between the two. She seved as Vice Chair of Undergraduate Education from 2020-2024.

Her work spans substantive areas, employing social psychological concepts and theories in the study of family, religion, work, and education, and uses diverse methodological approaches. In her current research projects she is exploring graduate student professionalization, the sociological sources and implications of impostor syndrome, and the effects of shifting conceptions of fatherhood for men’s perception of self and contributions to childcare and household labor.

She is also an award-winning teacher, most recently having received UCLA’s univeristy-wide Distinguished Teaching Award (2025). Related to teaching, she is a co-author of Social Psychology, a leading textbook in her field, and has published teaching related articles in Teaching Sociology, Social Psychology Quarterly, and Sage Research Methods Cases. At UCLA she teaches Introductory Sociology, Self and Society, and a senior seminar, Socialization and the Life Course. She also teaches graduate courses on social psychological topics and course development.