Ph.D., University of Utah
Nancy S. Fagley, Ph.D., is Professor Emerita in the Department of
School Psychology. Her current research focuses on appreciation (including
gratitude, among other components), with emphasis on fine-tuning its
conceptualization and measurement and on identifying its causes and
consequences. She conceptualizes appreciation as a higher-order construct, with
gratitude representing one of several lower-level components. Her research has
demonstrated that a greater tendency to feel appreciation significantly
contributes to life satisfaction, even after controlling for individual
differences in the Big 5 personality factors and trait gratitude. Thus
gratitude and appreciation are not synonymous, but instead are hierarchically
nested. Her earlier research focused on framing effects on choice, and her
research (in collaboration with Paul M. Miller and others) identified a number
of moderators of the effects of framing on choice including decision maker
characteristics such as gender, task features such as providing a rationale,
and decision problem features such as the arena (e.g., human life vs. money).
She serves on the editorial board of the Journal
of Behavioral Decision Making.
Faculty and Administration Biographies 
