Jan E. Stets is Distinguished Professor of Sociology. She is a sociological social psychologist and Director of the Social Psychology Research Laboratory at UCR.
Professor Stets is a micro-theorist. She works in the areas of self and identity, emotions, and morality. She uses identity theory to understand individuals' self-views, emotions, and moral sensibilities.
She is the author of 12 books, 100 articles and book chapters, and numerous grants. Recent books include Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research (with Ashley V. Reichelmann and K. Jill Kiecolt, Springer, 2023), Identity Theory: Revised and Expanded, Second Edition (with Peter J. Burke, Oxford University Press, 2023), and Identities in Action: Developments in Identity Theory (with Philip S. Brenner and Richard T. Serpe, Springer, 2021). The Sociology of Emotions (with Jonathan H. Turner, Cambridge University Press, 2005) has been translated into Japanese, Croatian, Polish, and Chinese. Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions (with Jonathan H. Turner, Springer, 2006), received the 2008 Outstanding Recent Contribution Award from the ASA Section on Emotions. In 2010, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the ASA Emotions Section. In 2020, she received the Cooley-Mead Lifetime Achievement Award from the ASA Social Psychology Section.
She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is past co-chair of the Department of Sociology at UCR, past director of the Sociology Program at the National Science Foundation, past co-editor of Social Psychology Quarterly, and past chair of the ASA Section on Social Psychology, the ASA Section on Emotions, and the ASA Section on Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity.