Senior assistant professor, Ph.D., Cătălina KOPETZ

Cătălina Kopetz is licensed in psychology from Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She obtained two MA degrees from Universite de Savoie, France, and from Universty of Maryland, USA, and her Ph.D. from University of Maryland, USA. Her main research interests focus on self-regulation phenomena from the perspective of motivation as cognition. Her expertise is related to how the dynamic relation between goals and their associated means of attainment within a particular goal-system, as well as between different goal-systems set in place in specific circumstances may influence one’s course of action. One intriguing aspect of self-regulation is that people are often unaware of the real motives driving their behavior. Her research seeks to understand the unconscious aspect of self-regulation in terms of goal-means and inter-goal associations and to explore its implications for both normal (e.g., self-regulation of dieting behavior) and abnormal behavior (e.g., risk taking and addiction). At present, she is also affiliated with University of Maryland, USA; for more details see here and/or here.

Sample of Representative Scientific Papers (Web of Science-Thomson ISI):

• Kopetz, C., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2008). Effects of accessibility and instantiation on the use of piecemeal and category information in impression formation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(5), 692-705.
• Kopetz, C., Kruglanski, A. W. Chen, X., & Orehek, E. (2008). Goal systemic effects in the context of choice and social judgment. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(6), 2071-2089.
• Desrichard, O., & Kopetz, C. (2005). A threat in the elder: The impact of task instructions and self-efficacy on memory performance in the elderly. European Journal of Social Psychology, 35(4), 537-552.
• Kruglanski, A. W., & Kopetz, C. (2009). The role of goal-systems in self-regulation. In E. Morsella, J. A. Bargh, & P. M. Gollwitzer (Eds.), The psychology of action (Vol 2): The mechanisms of human action (pp.350-367). Oxford University Press.
• Kruglanski, A. W., & Kopetz, C. (2009). What is so special (and non-special) about goals? A view from the cognitive perspective. In G. B. Moskowitz and H. Grant (Eds.), Goals. New York: Guilford Press.
• Kruglanski, A. W., & Kopetz, C. (2008). Confronting the self-control challenge: Unpacking the dilemma and its modes of resolution. To appear in R. Hassin, K. Ochsner, & Y. Trope (Eds.), Self-control. New York: Oxford University Press.