| Faculty Profile: Rob Ackerman, PhD
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 Dr. Robert Ackerman did his undergraduate work at Monmouth University in New Jersey and then worked as a caseworker at a day treatment center for two years. He then enrolled in the social personality graduate program at Michigan State University, where he earned both his master’s and doctoral degrees.
Ackerman said he always found close relationships interesting. “They make up a huge part of our lives. There’s nobody who’s not affected by relationships,” Ackerman said. He is also interested in personality pathology and disorders, including narcissism.
Ackerman joined the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at UT Dallas in 2011. He said he enjoyed being a part of a team here. “UTD is still new enough that [faculty] are able to be a part of the change. I like the diversity of the campus, the quality of the students and the collegiality of the faculty,” Ackerman said.
Much of Ackerman’s research involves studying how who we are shapes our relationships and how our relationships shape who we are. His campus lab is the Personality and Interpersonal Relationships lab (PAIR) lab. In one PAIR lab study he and his team observed people meeting each other and the paths they took in getting to know one another.
Ackerman also has studied college roommate relationships. He tracks how the relationships develop and how individual differences might be related to that development. He has found that people who have higher levels of detachment (basically, extreme introversion) display less warmth in their roommate relationships, and in turn have roommates who feel less close to them.
Ackerman primarily teaches graduate courses in Analysis of Variance and Multiple Regression. He also has also taught a course in Dyadic Data Analysis, in which students learn how to analyze data from couples. “Because of my interest in personality and relationships, I have also developed a quantitative expertise in measurement and how to analyze date from couples,” Ackerman said.
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