Steven R. Lawyer, Ph.D
Professor, Clinical Psychology - Chair, ISU Human Subjects Committee
Office: Garrison Rm 424
B.A. (1995) Western Michigan University
M.S. (1997) Auburn University
Pre-Doctoral Clinical Internship (2001-02), University of Mississippi Medical Center
Ph.D. (2002) Auburn University
Postdoctoral Fellowship (2002-04), National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, Medical University of South Carolina
Dr. Lawyer is accepting one clinical graduate student for admission in fall 2026.
Research Interests
Dr. Lawyer's Discounting and Risk-Taking lab focuses on how choices that people make in their day-to-day lives impact their health and well-being. He uses procedures based in behavioral economics, with a particular focus on delay discounting and probability discounting, to understand the psychological and contextual factors that influence human health problem behaviors such as sexual risk-taking, obesity, and substance abuse. He also is interested in trauma and anxiety and evidence-based approaches to ethical research practices.
Recent Publications
Rasmussen, E. B., Camp, L., & Lawyer, S. R. (2024). The Use of Nonmonetary Outcomes in Health-Related Delay Discounting Research: Review and Recommendations. Perspectives on behavior science, 47(2), 523-558. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40614-024-00403-7
Mahoney, C. T., Beck, B. M., Dixon, K. E., Horne, S. D., & Lawyer, S. R. (2024). Conceptualizing impulsivity as a construct in relation to posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity among women. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 37(6), 924-935. DOI: 10.1002/jts.23060
Mahoney, C. T., Lawyer, S. R., Pemberton, S. E., & Marchant, K. M. (2022). A laboratory examination of risky sexual behavior among female sexual trauma survivors. Journal of Traumatic Stress. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.22866
Lawyer, S. R., Smith, K., Thomas, B., & Pemberton, S. (2022). Reactions to laboratory-based trauma research in a sample of incarcerated women. Journal of empirical research on human research ethics, 17(1-2), 52-62. https://doi.org/10.1177/15562646211043632
Lawyer, S. R., Holcomb, B., & Prihodova, K. (2021). Immediate and delayed reactions to laboratory exposure to a trauma-related cue. Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1177/1556264621996102
Lawyer, S. R. & Jenks, C. (2020). Emotion suppression decreases delay discounting for monetary outcomes. The Psychological Record, 70, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-019-00361-6
Mahoney, C. T., & Lawyer, S. R. (2018). Domain-specific relationships in sexual measures of impulsive behavior. Archives of sexual behavior, 47(6), 1591-1599. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1210-y
Smith, K., Lawyer, S.R., & Swift, J. (2018). A meta-analysis of nonsystematic responding in delay and probability discounting. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 26, 94-107. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pha0000167
Lawyer, S. R., & Mahoney, C. T. (2018). Delay discounting and probability discounting, but not response inhibition, are associated with sexual risk taking in adults. The Journal of Sex Research, 55, 863-870. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2017.1350627