SFU Psychology welcomes lecturer Dr. Peter Leavitt

Peter Leavitt will be joining the Department of Psychology at Simon Fraser University this July as a lecturer.

Since completing his PhD at the University of Arizona in 2016, Leavitt has held teaching positions at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana. His teaching and research interests include a range of topics in social and cultural psychology, such as the psychology of social class, intergroup relations, and connecting across differences. This Fall 2024 term, he will be teaching PSYC 100 at the Burnaby (D100) and Surrey (D900) campuses.

Learn more about Dr. Leavitt below!

What brought you to Simon Fraser University?

When I saw the opportunity at Simon Fraser University where I could teach psychology (one of my favorite things to do) in the area where I grew up (one of my favorite parts of the world), I knew I couldn't pass it up. SFU is an institution I've held in high regard since I was young, and the psychology faculty do work that I deeply admire. I didn't have to think too hard about wanting to come here.

How did your research interests in social psychology, social class, etc get started?

It really started when I took my first social psychology class as an undergrad. That class taught me ideas and psychological concepts that had a huge impact on my worldview and they were ideas that I just couldn't stop thinking about. I knew I had to keep studying and exploring them.

Concurrently with my undergraduate education, I was also having experiences with a wider variety of people and places in the world and I really started to recognize how much of a difference a person's social context makes for the way they experience the world. 

Together, my psychology education and my personal experiences got me thinking a lot about cultural differences, social identity, social class, social hierarchy, and other related ideas. I haven't really stopped thinking about that stuff since. 

What is the most important issue that your research work addresses? And why/how is it important to you in particular?

I like to think that my teaching and research interests play a role in spreading psychological knowledge that helps people move through the world in more compassionate and understanding ways. Psychologically, we're all really complex products of a whole bunch of internal and external forces, but in real life it's really tempting to oversimplify that stuff when we're making sense of the world around us. So, to me the value of the stuff I teach and research about is that it can give us tools to understand ourselves and others that recognize how complex and interesting we all are and help us resist the urge to oversimplify things in ways that end up hurting people. Whether I'm teaching psychology basics or research methods or getting into the weeds of the psychology of social class, I hope that I'm giving reasons to think a little bit differently - and more compassionately - about themselves and others. 

What are you most looking forward to in working at SFU and also in the Department of Psychology?

I've thought highly of SFU since I was young and it's pretty incredible that I now get to be a part of the SFU community. I'm excited to be a part of the psychology department that is full of people whose work I admire. And I'm eager to get to know the students at SFU and have them fill me in on everything that has changed about the Lower Mainland since I lived here as a kid.

Do you have any advice to students who may want to consider graduate school or a career in Psychology?

Take your methods and stats courses seriously. Not only are these classes critical to excelling in psychology graduate programs, but the skills you learn in these classes will be very valuable in all sorts of non-psychology career paths and in regular life.

On that note, be open to non-psychology careers and be open to interdisciplinary work. There are lots of ways to "do psychology" out in the world that don't necessarily have "psychology" in the job description. The skills you learn in a psychology program will be in high demand in a lot of industries, but you need to start preparing early to identify and be competitive for those opportunities. 

Be kind. In grad school and beyond, the pressure to perform at a very high level can sometimes push people to be needlessly unkind to those around them. Don't give in to that temptation. Using kindness to cultivate close relationships and strong social support systems will do far more good for yourself and those around you.