Joseph A. Vandello grew up as the second of three children in a small town in Iowa. He received his BS from the University of Iowa in 1994 and received his Ph D from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2000. In 2002, he joined the Psychology Department at the University of South Florida. His culturally homogenous (i.e., White, middle-class) upbringing fed a curiosity about understanding the diversity of the human experience outside of his small corner of the world and led him to study social psychology as a career. He has broad research interests in understanding manhood and masculinity, aggression, honor, underdogs, interracial interactions, and moral judgments.