Stanley O. Gaines

Stanley O. Gaines Jr. is a Social Psychologist and Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Brunel University. Gaines is the lead author of Culture, Ethnicity, and Personal Relationship Processes, published by Routledge in 1997. Personal and biographical information Gaines earned a PhD in psychology from the University of Texas in 1991. Throughout this time he had the support of a UT-Austin graduate fellowship, a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship, and a Macalester College pre-doctoral fellowship. After graduate school he spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow and soon after served as an assistant professor of Psychology and Black Studies at Pomona College from 1993-2000. On June 30, 2000, Gaines’ contract expired and he was forced to leave Pomona College after being denied lifetime tenure. This followed with threat of Gaines going on a hunger strike and led him to “fight the College’s immoral, unethical, and illegal behavior toward me.” In 1996 he received a Ford Foundation fellowship to do more research at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. In 2000, Gaines spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of the West Indies, and from 2001 to now, Gaines has been working as a senior lecturer at Brunel University. Gaines is also a chair member of the International Association for Relationship Research, an Editorial Advisory Board member for the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, and a research fellow for the University of Bath. Discussion of major area of work As a trained social psychologist, Gaines specializes in close relationships and statistics. He has been able to publish in both mainstream and African-centered publications. His current research focuses on the links between objective poverty and individuals’ experience of inner wellbeing across time, among married men and women, and single women heading households in rural villages within India and Zambia. Gaines’ main areas of research include close relationships, culture and ethnicity, gender psychology, intergroup relations, interpersonal processes, personality and individual difference, prejudice and stereotyping, and research methods and assessment.