Steve McCornack, Ph.D.Steve McCornack, Ph.D., professor of communication studies in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded the International Association of Language and Social Psychology Best Article Award for articles published between 2013 and 2015.

 The paper, titled “Information manipulation theory 2: A propositional theory of deceptive discourse production,” was published in the 2014 issue of the Journal of Language and Social Psychology.

 Every second year, in conjunction with the International Conferences on Language and Social Psychology, the association appoints a review committee to award the best paper in the journal over the previous two years. Articles are rated on innovation, contribution to research on language and social psychology, quality of writing, and methodological rigor. 

The review committee describes the article as superbly written and insightful, and notes that it addresses important issues in language and social psychology and locates them in the vast realm of research in deception.

“Brilliant theoretical development in a truly fraught area that needs this – carefully argued, and clearly based in language and discourse, yet interdisciplinary – it is really comprehensive, and makes fewer assumptions about deceptive communication than other theoretical papers in the past,” one reviewer wrote.

Kelly Morrison, Ph.D., also a professor of communication studies, was one of three co-authors of the paper. McCornack and Morrison joined the UAB faculty in 2016 after more than 20 years at Michigan State University.