Dr. Shannon Houck is an Assistant Professor in the Defense Analysis Department at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). She is a Social Psychologist with expertise on the science of influence and persuasion, psychological resilience and resistance, and extremism. Prior to joining NPS, she was a faculty member at Syracuse University from 2016-2020. She is the author of over 40 scholarly articles and book chapters, and her research has been featured on popular news outlets such as the New York Times, Psychology Today, and USA Today.

PUBLICATIONS

Houck, S.C. (2022). Psychological Capabilities for Resilience. War on the Rocks. https://warontherocks.com/2022/12/psychological-capabilities-for-resilience/

Houck, S.C. & Allan, J.R. (2022). QAnon’s Psychological Influence: Investigating Q’s Digital Messaging. Combatting Terrorism Exchange.

Borer & Houck, S.C. (2022). Relative Weakness: The Secret to Understanding Irregular Warfare. Small Wars Journal. https://smallwarsjournal.com/index.php/jrnl/art/relative-weakness-secret-understanding-irregular-warfare

Dundon, M. & Houck, S.C. (2022). Adversarial Propaganda: How Enemies Target the U.S. to Breed Societal Division. Journal of Applied Security Research.

Maness, R.C., Houck, S.C., & Lorentz, R. (2022). Operations in the Information Environment and Cyber-enabled Information Operations. In Interdisciplinary Study of Combatting Hybrid Threats.

Houck, S.C., Salvati, J.M., Newman, L.S., Vrij, A. (2021). Simulating interrogation in the lab: Examining the effectiveness of pain, coercive verbal pressure, and rapport-building for obtaining reliable information. Journal of Applied Security Research.

Houck, S.C. Conway, L.G., & Zubrod, A. (2021). Automated Integrative Complexity: A language analysis tool for psychological research. In R. Boyd & M. Dehghani (Eds.), The Atlas of Language Analysis in Psychology. Guilford Press.

Houck, S.C., Branagan, B., Gramm, J., & Crisafulli, J. (2021). Changing Hearts and Brains:
SOF Must Prepare Now for Neurowarfare. Small Wars Journal. https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/changing-hearts-and-brains-sof-must-prepare-now- neurowarfare

Conway, L.G., III, Conway, K.R., & Houck, S.C. (2020). Validating Automated Integrative Complexity: Natural language processing and the Donald Trump test. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 8(2), 504-524.

Houck, S.C., & Conway & L.G. III. (2019). Strategic communication and the integrative complexity-ideology relationship: Meta-analytic findings reveal differences between public politicians and private citizens in their use of simple language. Political Psychology, 40: 1119-1141.

Houck, S.C., McFarland, J., Machia, L.V., & Conway, L.G. III. (2019). When beliefs lead to (im)moral action: How believing in torture’s effectiveness shapes the endorsement of its use. Political Psychology, 40: 1315-1339.

Conway, L.G, III, Houck, S.C., Gornick, L.J., & Repke, M.A. (2018). Finding the Loch Ness Monster: Left-Wing Authoritarianism in the United States. Political Psychology, 39(5), 1049–67.

Houck, S.C., Repke, M.A., Conway, L.G. III. (2017). Understanding what makes terrorist groups’ propaganda effective: An integrative complexity analysis of ISIL and Al Qaeda. Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, 12(2), 105-118.

Houck, S.C., & Repke, M.A. (2017). When and why we torture: A review of psychology research. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 3(3), 272-283.

Houck, S.C., & Conway, L.G. III (2015). Ethically investigating torture efficacy: A new methodology to test the influence of pain on decision-making processes in experimental interrogation scenarios. Journal of Applied Security Research, 10(4), 510-524.

Houck, S.C., Conway, L.G., III, Gornick, L.J. (2014). Automated integrative complexity: Current challenges and future directions. Political Psychology, 35, 647-659.