Dr. Hank Rothgerber (email) earned his B.A. from Georgetown University with a double major in psychology and government and his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in Social Psychology.
His research primarily focuses on human-animal interactions in the context of food choices. In general, he aims to address how people psychologically approach eating animals – whether to, and if so, how to justify it? This lends itself to studies of (a) omnivores and how they resolve the meat paradox (“I love animals;” “I eat them”) and (b) the psychology of vegetarianism.
Dr. Rothgerber’s research has received international media attention, being featured by NBC news, the British Psychological Society, the Daily Mail (UK), Scientific American, Huffington Post, Psychology Today, LiveScience.com, the Humane Research Council, international newspapers, and a number of internet blogs. He has been interviewed by Discovery News, and CDKU (Canada) radio and received interest from Women’s Health and the Food Network Magazine. His work has also been covered in a Psychology Today blog (Animals & Us) that has had almost half a million reads. Dr. Rothgerber writes his own column for Psychology Today, The Motivated Mind.
When not trying to improve students' critical thinking skills and challenging their sense of morality, Dr. Rothgerber enjoys playing tournament chess, reading fiction and non-fiction, coaching middle school basketball, watching world cup soccer and college basketball, and mostly, spending time with his wife and children.
Please visit Dr. Rothgerber's blog at hankrothgerber.com for more information about his ideas and interests.