Dr. Kendra Seaman
- Assistant Professor of Psychology
- Fellow, Eugene McDermott Distinguished Professor
The McDermott Professorships were established in August 2017, funded by an anonymous gift, with the goal of providing early career support and recognition to faculty members who have established extraordinary records of research productivity, teaching excellence and university service, and who show promise of being leaders of the UT Dallas faculty in the future.
“My research program seeks to understand what motivates people, how this impacts their choices and how these things change across the adult lifespan. This understanding is important because the oldest section of the population commands significant economic and social leverage. I am immensely proud of the research lab we’ve built during my first six years at UT Dallas, and I am honored to receive this support to help continue our work.”
Dr. Kendra Seaman studies the mental processes at the intersection of learning, motivation, decision-making and adult development by using behavioral, modeling and neuroimaging techniques to promote health and well-being as people age.
Her research topics include older adults’ reliance on social factors in decision-making relative to younger adults, how decisions about monetary rewards may differ from situations with rewards in other domains and how that reflects what matters most to people, how responses differ to delayed versus immediate rewards, and how individuals at different ages represent expected value.
Seaman has published 25 peer-reviewed articles in the fields of psychology and neuroscience in publications including Psychology and Aging, The Journal of Neuroscience and the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.
She has received funding from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging and from the National Science Foundation. She has also received the George L. Maddox Aspiring Investigator Award from Duke University School of Medicine and the Alexis F. Dillard Student Involvement Award from the University of Kansas (KU).
Seaman joined the faculty of The University of Texas at Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences in 2019. She directs the Aging Well Lab in the University’s Center for Vital Longevity.
She was a postdoctoral researcher at both Yale University and Duke after receiving her doctorate in applied experimental psychology and her Master of Arts in general psychology from Catholic University of America. Seaman earned bachelor’s degrees in psychology and biology from KU, and worked for Teach For America before beginning her graduate studies.