Honor Bound: How a Cultural Ideal Has Shaped the American Psyche

Ryan Brown is the Managing Director for Measurement at Rice University's Doerr Institute for New Leaders. He was a professor of social psychology at The University of Oklahoma for almost 20 years, where he taught and conducted research on how people think, feel, and behave. While there, he helped establish the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing. After earning his Ph.D. at The University of Texas at Austin, he briefly taught at Amherst College in Massachusetts before going to OU. He graduated cum laude with a B.A. in psychology from Rice University in Houston, Texas. Having grown up in Alabama of Scotch-Irish descent, he has spent almost all of his life in “honor states,” an experience which no doubt has motivated and supported his research interests.

He has published dozens of empirical studies on human thought and behavior, from the impact of stereotypes on human cognition, to the psychology of forgiveness, to the socio-cultural dynamics of honor. His most recent publication is Honor Bound: How a Cultural Ideal Has Shaped the American Psyche.