Mark Leary

Mark Richard Leary, Ph.D. (born November 29, 1954) is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University (Durham, North Carolina). His research has made significant contributions to the fields of social psychology and personality psychology.

Leary completed his undergraduate coursework at West Virginia Wesleyan College in 1976. He obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Florida. He has held teaching positions at Denison University, the University of Texas at Austin, Wake Forest University, and Duke University, and lectures for The Great Courses. Leary is credited for publishing or editing 12 books and more than 200 articles or chapters for academic journals. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association. Leary also founded the scholarly journal Self and Identity in 2001. Additionally, he has served on the editorial review boards of many other academic journals in psychology.

Leary's research has spanned the topics of the self and identity (social science), self-esteem, interpersonal motivation and emotion, need to belong, and self-compassion.

He is well known for developing the sociometer theory, an interpersonal explanation for variations in self-esteem within individuals. This theory suggests people have an internal measure of social acceptance (or rejection) which determines state self-esteem; unhealthy levels of state self-esteem encourage changes in affect, behavior, and/or cognition in order to regain social acceptance.

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