PhD, University of Chicago
MA, Loyola University, Chicago
AB, Georgetown University

Professor Hammack’s research broadly investigates identity development in cultural, social, and political contexts. He is currently engaged in two active research programs:

Narrative, Identity, and Political Conflict

This line of research examines identity in the context of political conflict, with a focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Based on field research conducted with Israeli and Palestinian youth and their families from 2003-2007, Professor Hammack has proposed a paradigm for the study of culture and identity that integrates levels of analysis (i.e., individual and social structural) using ethnographic and idiographic methods (published in 2008 in Personality and Social Psychology Review). In a series of articles, he has also documented the unique process of identity development that Israelis and Palestinians undergo as a consequence of longstanding and intractable conflict. The descriptive aspect of this research has been concerned with cultural psychology’s commitment to documentation of diversity in human development and psychological experience. Thus a major aim has been to generate context-dependent theory on the relationship between conflict and identity.

A new line of research within this area focuses on the social psychological process of delegitimization—the process by which group members come to place members of an outgroup in a place of lesser moral and existential value. Using survey methods, Professor Hammack has demonstrated this process among Israeli youth and is initiating a new comparative project to extend this research beyond the Israeli-Palestinian context.

This program of research has also been concerned with the process and outcome of intergroup contact between Palestinians and Israelis. A series of studies on this topic reveals both the possibilities and limitations of contact theory and highlights the need for both individual and social structural interventions to create the social conditions necessary for peaceful coexistence.

Sexual Identity and Society

Professor Hammack’s second research program focuses on the social context of sexual identity. A major interest in this work is in the historical and cultural specificity of sexual identity. In 2005, Professor Hammack proposed an integrative paradigm for the study of sexual identity development that reconciles “essentialist” and “constructionist” views of sexual orientation through the assumption of a life-course approach—a theoretical perspective that locates sexual identity development in its historical context.

In a number of his writings, Professor Hammack has argued that contemporary youth with same-sex desire are exposed to competing “master” cultural narratives of sexual identity and has called for a new line of inquiry that addresses the changing cultural and historical context of sexual identity in the United States. Using a narrative approach, Professor Hammack has recently initiated a series of studies on the life stories of youth with same-sex desire to examine these important questions about the relationship among desire, narrative, and identity.

Hammack, P.L. (In press). Exploring the reproduction of conflict through narrative: Israeli youth motivated to participate in a coexistence program. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology.

Hammack, P.L., & Cohler, B.J. (In press). The story of sexual identity: Narrative perspectives on the gay and lesbian life course. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hammack, P.L. (In press). The cultural psychology of American-based coexistence programs for Israeli and Palestinian youth. In C. McGlynn, M. Zembylas, Z. Bekerman, & T. Gallagher (Eds.), Peace education in conflict and post-conflict societies: Comparative perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hammack, P.L. (2008). Narrative and the cultural psychology of identity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12(3), 222-247.

Hammack, P.L. (2006). Identity, conflict, and coexistence: Life stories of Israeli and Palestinian adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Research, 21(4), 323-369.

Hammack, P.L. (2005). The life-course development of human sexual orientation: An integrative paradigm. Human Development, 48, 267-290.