Brittany Tausen, Ph.D., Appointed Assistant Professor of Social Psychology in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core

Baylor’s Honors College is pleased to welcome Brittany M. Tausen, Ph.D. assistant professor of social psychology in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core (BIC) and affiliated professor of psychology and neuroscience.

"Brittany’s appointment marks a thrilling chapter in the BIC story, as her social psychology background will strengthen our program’s standing in the sciences at Baylor and beyond,” BIC Director Darren Middleton, Ph.D., said. “She already has a track record as a highly effective teacher, at ease and compelling in the lab, around the seminar table, and at the lectern. Her original and creative scholarship will augment the wider social and natural sciences that have sought to place philosophy, theology, and even morality on neuroscientific foundations.”

Trained as a social psychologist, Tausen brings an interdisciplinary approach shaped by academic experiences in Scotland, Chicago, and the Pacific Northwest. She earned her doctorate from the University of Aberdeen, where she studied social cognitive neuroscience,  before specializing in social cognition and examining topics such as perspective-taking, embodiment, and how humans understand one another across difference.

“I’ve always been drawn to questions that don’t fit neatly inside one discipline,” Tausen said. “Psychology gives us important tools for understanding human behavior, but those tools are limited if they are not in conversation with other ways of knowing. Some of the most meaningful questions about purpose, dignity, and responsibility require us to think across fields rather than staying in our silos.”

Her research trajectory sharpened during a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where she began studying dehumanization and how it shapes attitudes and behavior toward marginalized populations, particularly individuals experiencing homelessness. Living in a large urban context prompted deeper questions about how people come to deny others aspects of their humanity, often without realizing it.

“I became really interested in how easily people can reduce others to categories or problems to be managed,” she said. “We might focus on basic needs like food or shelter while overlooking deeper human needs like belonging, meaning, and purpose. Those perceptions matter because they strongly predict how willing we are to act with compassion.”

That work continued during her time at Seattle Pacific University, where Tausen studied whether well-intentioned institutional efforts consistently produce their desired impact. There, she began asking a question that now anchors much of her scholarship: how do we align intention with impact?

“At every level, personal, institutional, or societal, we often mean well,” Tausen said. “But good intentions do not automatically translate into good outcomes. I am interested in understanding the psychological and environmental barriers that keep us from living out the values we say we hold, especially when it comes to loving our neighbors well.”

Those questions sit at the center of Tausen’s recent book, Love Your Neighbor: How Psychology Can Enliven Faith and Transform Community, which explores how psychological research and Christian theology can inform one another in the cultivation of virtue and character.

“There is often an assumption that faith and science are in tension,” she said. “What we have found instead is that they can be mutually illuminating. Psychology can help us see why loving others is so difficult in practice, while theology helps us name why that love matters in the first place.”

In the classroom, Tausen is especially interested in how environments shape moral formation. Her teaching draws on research-supported models that emphasize not only cognitive learning, but also behavioral practice, motivation, and embodied experience.

“We often treat virtue as something students simply need to understand,” she said. “But virtue is formed through practice over time and across many settings. If students only engage these ideas intellectually, they may leave with strong definitions but little capacity to live them out consistently. My goal is to help students strengthen those ‘virtue muscles’ in ways that extend beyond the classroom.”

Tausen said she was drawn to Baylor’s Honors College and the BIC because of its distinctive commitment to interdisciplinary education and sustained faculty collaboration.

“I have not seen another model quite like this,” she said. “Students are being asked to hold together multiple perspectives, integrate different forms of evidence, and learn how to disagree well. That kind of formation does not just prepare them for a career. It prepares them for thoughtful, responsible engagement in the world.”

Harkening to the Honors College vision, Dean of the Honors College Douglas Henry, Ph.D., said, “Brittany’s Christian conviction, united to a stellar record of classroom and research accomplishment, make her a fantastic addition to the College. She is a living embodiment of our desire to love truth, kindle faith, and cultivate virtue in friendship, study, and service to Christ and neighbor, and her contributions in the BIC and beyond will surely make the whole university better.”

Originally from North Idaho, Tausen spent the past decade in Seattle before relocating to Waco with her family. Outside the classroom, she enjoys spending time outdoors, especially on the water, and exploring new places with her husband and children.