Johanna Peetz, Graduate Chair

Research Interests

I study three topics of social psychological thoughts and behaviour, as separate lines of research and at their intersections. Across the different topics my research aims to improve everyday decisions and goal-consistent actions.

First, I study time perception. I am interested in how seemingly arbitrary differences in how time is visually or verbally represented (e.g., a calendar that uses a monthly format versus a weekly format; thinking of landmark events between now and a future time) affect how people think about and plan their lives.

Second, I study relationship cognition. I am interested in how people perceive their romantic relationship over time (i.e., how they think it has changed from the past and will change into the future) and how accurate these perceptions are. I also study how other thoughts in relationships affect relationship quality, for example partners’ thoughts about finances. Do similar outlooks on money and spending increase relationship harmony?

Third, I study personal spending. I am interested in ways to bring people’s spending in line with spending goals, for example via self-regulation strategies, as well as in ways to make predictions about future spending more accurate.

Selected publications are listed below but please see my lab website for more detailed information about ongoing lines of research.

Peetz, J., & Davydenko, M. (2022). Financial Self-regulation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass. http://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12663

Peetz, J., Shimizu, J. P.K., & Royle, C. (2022). Projecting current feelings into the past and future: Better current relationship quality reduces negative retrospective bias and increases positive forecasting bias. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

Peetz, J., & Davydenko, M. (2021). Financial self-control strategy use: Reminders of personal strategies (but not expert strategies) reduce spending. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 97, 104189.

Smyth, A. P., Capaldi, A. A., & Peetz, J. (2020). Ex-appraisal bias: Negative illusions in appraising relationship quality retrospectively. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 37(5), 1673-1680.

Davydenko, M., & Peetz, J. (2019). Does it matter if a week starts on Monday or Sunday?: How calendar format can motivate goal motivation in the moment. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 82, 231-237.

Peetz, J., & Wilson, A. (2013). The post-birthday world: Motivational and self-appraisal consequences of temporal landmarks. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104, 249-267.