Professor; Associate Chair for Graduate Studies
she/her/hers
About
Prospective Graduate Students: please see *note below
Professor of Communication and Media, Professor of Psychology (By Courtesy); Research Professor, Research Center for Group Dynamics, Institute for Social Research.
Professor Dal Cin obtained her undergraduate degree from Queen's University (Canada) and her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Waterloo (Canada), where she held a Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. She came to the University of Michigan following a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center (now Dartmouth Cancer Center).
Professor Dal Cin's major research interest is how everyday experiences with media affect thought, emotion, and behavior, and how these in turn shape media effects and the media-related choices people make. Her work examines the processes of story-based belief change, the role of identification with characters, the impact that stories have on behavior, and how these effects might occur outside viewers' conscious awareness. She studies the experience of media use, the effects it has on important outcomes, and the processes that underlie these effects, paying particular attention to the impacts of individual differences and the influence of context, including developmental stage. Her work integrates social-cognitive research on media influence and learning with communication science and social psychological research on media effects.
Current research includes the role of communication media in health behavior, stereotyping, adolescent development, and older adulthood.
Professor Dal Cin's work has appeared at national and international conferences, and in academic journals including the American Journal of Preventive Medicine; Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine (now JAMA: Pediatrics); Communication Theory; Health Communication; Health Psychology; Human Communication Research; Information, Comunication, & Society; Journal of Neuroscience; Media Psychology; New Media & Society; Pediatrics; and Psychological Science.
***Prospective graduate students: I do not plan to be primary advisor for students applying in Fall 2025. Many questions about the Doctoral Program in Communication and Media are answered on our Graduate Program webpages; for matters not addressed in those materials, please contact the Graduate Program Coordinator.
