Rex A. Wright, Ph.D.

Rex A. Wright, Ph.D., is a faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and a courtesy affiliate faculty member in the Department of Business, Government and Society at The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business. Wright earned his doctorate in social psychology at the University of Kansas, specializing in social motivation, and his bachelor’s in psychology from UT. He received two years of postdoctoral training in health psychology and psychophysiology — training first at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and then at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Wright previously was a faculty member at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, aligned with the medical psychology Ph.D. training program, and a faculty member at the University of North Texas, aligned with the behavioral science Ph.D. training program. He has held visiting faculty appointments at UT, the University of Maryland at College Park and the University of Missouri and has been a visiting scholar at various European institutions, including the Max Planck Institut für Psychologische Forschung – Munich (Germany), Universität Bielefeld (Germany), Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany), Universitè de Genève (Switzerland) and Jagiellonian University (Poland).

Wright’s research is motivational, with affective and physiological elements being part and parcel of processes investigated. It is guided by a conceptual analysis that has wide-ranging implications, including ones for chronotype, cognitive decline, cardiovascular health, self-regulation, trauma, and behavior in education, family and work settings. Very recent focuses have been on fatigue influence on impulse control and a new theory of love that integrates many of the ideas on which Wright has worked throughout his career. Wright was a founding member of the Society for the Science of Motivation, is a past president of the society, and is co-editor-in-chief of the society’s flagship journal, Motivation Science.