Hi!

My name is Jaime Lane Derringer. I’m an associate professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

I’m also the psych department’s Assistant Head of Information & Communication (complain to me about our website).

I am an interdisciplinary scientist, working at the intersection of personality psychology and molecular genetics. My dual expertise in genetic methods and psychological assessment has led to the development of a research program organized around understanding how people, for all the fundamental similarities across members of our species, display such remarkable diversity and flexibility of behavior. I co-run the Etiology of Personality and Individual Characteristics (EPIC) lab with Dr. D. A. Briley.

I am not accepting new graduate students for Fall 2025.

My current research, teaching, and service focus is on two topics: how we (scientists, the public) understand human behavior genetics, and improving integration of gender & sexuality concepts in psychological science.

Understanding Human Behavior Genetics

Human Behavior Genetics: A Workbook, open educational resources for teaching behavior genetics

Once we succeed in discovering and replicating specific genetic variants that are correlated with human behavior, we are still left with many fundamental questions unanswered - what comes next? For all the genes correlated with human behavior that have been identified in the last decade, our understanding of how these genes come to be correlated with behavior remains incredibly limited.

Much of the public perception of behavior genetics presumes the field as a whole landed on the genetic determinism side of the “Nature versus Nurture” debate, and is now working toward a goal of designer babies. One reason for this misunderstanding may be the tendency of the field to focus on high-stakes outcomes (like cognitive ability and mental health) and methods that prioritize genetic information over rich measures of environments and experiences.

Reckoning with the role behavior genetics has played in racism, white supremacy, and eugenics is a substantial challenge. I am committed to actively promoting anti-racist principles throughout the field of behavior genetics.

I teach Psyc 408 Human Behavior Genetics (open to undergrads and grad students) in the Fall semester.

“queer not as being about who you’re having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”

bell hooks

Expanding Gender and Sexuality in Psychological Science

Our lab’s research on gender and sexuality attempts to substantially broaden the inclusion of sexual and gender minority perspectives in the psychological sciences. We are developing and validating quantitative methods for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting diverse samples that will provide a framework for other scientists to diversify their own samples and questions.

Click here to visit the Psychology Observed Within Every Romantic (POWER) relationship study, a longitudinal survey of gender- and sexuality-diverse relationship experiences to model individual and dyadic personality processes over time.

Preregistrations

  • Brooke Kadel, Eleanor J. Junkins, & Jaime Derringer. (2023). How does variation in gender expression relate to diverse gender labels and sexual orientations? https://osf.io/g37pv/

  • Briana Louise Kunstman & Jaime Derringer. (2024). BDSM and Kink Identities. https://osf.io/b97y2/

Recent Papers

  • Eleanor J. Junkins, D. A. Briley, Brian G. Ogolsky, & Jaime Derringer. (2024, under review). Psychometrics of psychosocial variables in a sexual and gender diverse longitudinal study. PsyArXiv pre-print, https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/wxkmd.

  • Eleanor J. Junkins, Brian G. Ogolsky, & Jaime Derringer. (2023, under review). Not like everybody else but we’re the same: Psychosocial variables across diverse sexual and gender identities. PsyArXiv, https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/asfx2.

  • Eleanor J. Junkins, Keely A. Dugan, Samar Chehab, Y. Sarah Han, Tingyan Liu, Jiepeng Yuan, & Jaime Derringer. (2024). Systematic review of queer and minority identities in romantic relationships research. Psychology & Sexuality, https://doi.org/10.1080/19419899.2024.2307045. Open access version: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/8c9ju

  • Eleanor J. Junkins, Kenzhane Pantin, & Jaime Derringer. (2024). Personality across diverse sexual orientations and gender identities in an online convenience sample. Journal of Research in Personality, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104466.

  • Kenzhane Pantin & Jaime Derringer. (2020). A short measure of sexual self-concept. PsyArXiv, https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/2bqf8

Other Projects

Click here to learn about the EPIC lab’s current online surveys

“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.”

not really Margaret Mead

Memes

You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means meme with the word HERITABLE at the top

Is This A Pigeon? meme with the person labeled 'Quantitative researchers' referring to the butterfly labeled 'A statistical interaction' asking 'Is this intersectionality?'

After All, Why Not? Why Shouldn't I Keep It? meme with the word 'keep' replaced with 'factor analyze'

I may have committed some light treason meme with the word 'treason' replaced with 'eugenics'

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