Dr. Don Osborn, Professor, completed his B.A. at Miami University (Ohio) and his M. A. and Ph.D. at Northwestern University. His area of expertise is Social Psychology. His research papers include studies on how personality traits influence interior design and artistic style preferences; evaluation research on how mass transit subsidies affect ridership, and studies on how self-presentation strategies influence personal attributions. His current research projects are concerned with attitudes towards tax policies and global warming, and a critical examination of the limitations of evolutionary psychology in explaining human beauty judgments. Several conference presentations on these topics have been co-authored with students who collaborated on the research.
Dr. Osborn’s teaching experience has included Social Psychology, Child Psychology, Theories of Personality, Dimensions of Consciousness, Organizational Psychology in the Psychology Department and Bellarmine MBA Program, and Research Methods in Psychology and Business Research Methods in the MBA Program, Human Sexuality and Senior Comprehensive Seminar, a core curriculum social policy class. His current classes include Introductory Psychology and Cross Cultural Sexuality, an IDC class. His classes provide opportunities for students to work in groups and develop creative projects that increase each individual’s understanding and help the other students learn. He has also been active in community service as the President of a local neighborhood association and in the Highlands Connection, a coalition of neighborhoods. In his free time he likes to work around the house, keep up with politics, go to movies, check out antique shops, and attend art openings with his wife, Maggie Meloy, an art historian and Bellarmine Adjunct faculty. Their son, Andrew, graduated from Bellarmine with a degree in Liberal Studies, works for a video production company and is a drummer in an indie rock band.
This link goes to a list of the portraits of the Renaissance Courtesans that were used as stimuli in the research paper "Renaissance Beauty = Today's Unattractive: The Size and Significance of Historico-Cultural Differences in Physical Attractiveness Judgments".