Assistant Professor, Psychological Sciences
- PhD, Psychology, University of Miami, Concentration in Quantitative Psychology
- MS, Psychology, University of Miami
- BA, Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara
Daniel Forster is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of San Diego. He joined the department in 2024, where he teaches courses in statistics, research methods, and social psychology. Dr. Forster’s research centers on the social, emotional, and cognitive processes that drive people to initiate, maintain, and repair interpersonal relationships. Prior to his role at USD, he served as a civilian research psychologist at the Army Research Laboratory, investigating the impact of artificial intelligence on team dynamics, including trust, cohesion, and performance.
Scholarly Work
Dr. Forster’s research interests include the roles of gratitude, forgiveness, and interpersonal trust in fostering cooperative interactions. He employs experimental techniques and advanced quantitative methods to explore the causes and consequences of cooperation. His work aims to refine methods for measuring abstract constructs such as emotions and attitudes, and to model causal relationships between these variables and experimental manipulations. He is currently seeking motivated research assistants interested in developing skills in experimental and quantitative methods for social psychological research.
Dr. Forster has published in esteemed journals including Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, Scientific Reports, and Evolution and Human Behavior. He has presented his work at major conferences such as the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. He is dedicated to open science practices, including pre-registering studies and sharing study materials, data, and peer-reviewed reports. Many of his projects are available on the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/grifu/.