Nora McLean

Professor Nora McLean is an experimental psychologist whose research interests include human behavioral and physiological reactions to social stimuli and social stress. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and she has taught courses focusing on various elements of biological psychology, psychological research design/statistics, and human development.

Prof. McLean’s and her students’ research examines how psychosocial stress and acute anxiety are related to hormonal reactivity and social behavior, particularly focusing on the neuroendocrine bases of human social decision-making and cooperation. Prof. McLean is also interested in individual differences in behavior in relation to sex and stress hormones and personality. Her work often grapples with experimental psychology through a lens of functional or adaptive behaviors, and she has worked with multiple nonhuman models in order to study how organisms behave within their particular social environment.

Prof. McLean has published in a number of journals, including Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, Psychological Science, and Behavioral and Brain Sciences. She has also received a certificate in computational social science and enjoys working with students on computational statistical analyses and visualizations, particularly with first-time student programmers.

Outside of academia, Prof. McLean enjoys running outdoors, living near the lake, and spoiling her six-pound Yorkshire terrier, Twig.

• B.S. — University of Notre Dame
• M.A. — University of Chicago
• Ph.D. — University of Chicago

• PYC 4010 Psychology of Stress
• PYC 2020 Comparative Psychology
• PYC 2010 Research Methods and Statistics I
• PYC 3010 Research Methods and Statistics II
• PYC 1500 Introduction to Psychological Sciences
• PYC 4800 Thesis in Psychological Science
• PYC 200K The Science of Stress and Well-Being

Prof. McLean’s research interests include:

• Neuroendocrine bases of human decision-making and cooperation
• Behavioral and biological responsiveness to social stimuli and psychosocial stress
• Individual differences in behavior in relation to sex and stress hormones - Computational data analysis and visualization
• Subjective anxiety in the classroom and on college campuses