Thomas R Brooks

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• PhD Educational Psychology
• Assistant Professor at New Mexico Highlands University

Peak and mystical experiences can be seen as states of consciousness that exist on a spectrum of varying intensity and duration. They are often described as moments of profound joy, ecstasy, and awe that involve feelings of noetic quality, decreased self-salience, and heightened interconnectedness. The renewed interest in psychedelics as a potentia...

The concept of cancel culture has gained traction over the past 10 years, with the continuous rise of social media and online platforms. The limited literature on this topic tends to focus on possible definitions and characteristics. However, we have yet to fully understand how cancel culture, canceling, and canceling prevention impact individuals...

Transhumanism is a school of thought that promotes the enhancement of humanity through technological intervention (e.g., cloning, gene therapies, uploading one’s mind to a computer, nanotechnology). Due to its aims of altering evolutionary processes (Bostrom, 2005), transhumanism is highly controversial (Sinicki, 2015). The ideology finds support f...

The importance of social interaction on well-being has been investigated in a variety of social psychological domains (e.g., homelessness, addiction, and immigration); however, little research has been conducted on the associations between social motivation, community, and well-being within BDSM/kink practitioners. Previous literature has found tha...

Departures from monogamy are socially discouraged and met with negative judgments, and being a target of stigmatization has consequences for the way individuals in consensual non-monogamous (CNM) relationships connect to others, including their partner(s). However, social support seems to be an important factor associated with increases in wellbein...

Departures from monogamy are socially discouraged and met with negative judgments, and being a target of stigmatization has consequences for the way individuals in consensual non-monogamous (CNM) relationships connect to others, including their partner(s). However, social support seems to be an important factor associated with increases in wellbein...

The satanic panic of the 1980s represented a paradigm shift in the categorization of trauma from select, political demographics (e.g., women, veterans, prisoners of war) to the population at large. In the present chapter, I track the flashpoints of the satanic panic and demonstrate how the psychological research responded to the cultural phenomenon...

PhD students’ experiences in graduate school and associated outcomes vary by field of study, learning environment conditions, and support structures. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic specifically, PhD students’ individual educational trajectories were potentially rendered more uncertain, as disruptive conditions for learning and research hav...

Interest in consensually non-monogamous (CNM) relationships has been increasing in the general population in recent years. However, given the cultural dominance of monogamy and the normative expectations often imposed through socialization (i.e., mononormativity), people in CNM relationships may experience negativity, which can become internalized...

The chapter reviews the last ten years of research on the sexuality of furries.

Work assessing the psychological impacts of COVID-19 on university student populations has most often focused on undergraduates. To assess the impacts on graduate students and inform university-led solutions to foster support, this study examines the extent to which students pursuing a doctorate, master's, or other professional degree exhibited pos...

As trauma-informed interventions increase in popularity across educational settings, important questions pertaining to the empirical effectiveness of these programs need to be addressed (Thomas et al., 2019). The present study serves as preliminary findings of two east Texas public elementary schools who implemented a Trust-Based Relational Interve...

Dating app users are likely to experience a high frequency of viewing the sexually explicit material of potential partners prior to a physical meeting. The present study aimed to investigate what information is inferred from a picture of a penis at zero-acquaintance. Past research in impression formation at zero-acquaintance has demonstrated a stab...

The purpose of the present study was to examine associations between heterosexual consensually non-monogamous (CNM) and monogamous relationships and variables relating to relationship functioning and individual well-being. Participants (N = 555) were solicited online and asked to rate a number of items regarding their type of relationship, satisfac...

Furries can be described as a mediacentric fandom, similar to other fandoms, which organizes around an interest in anthropomorphic art. Past research has also aimed to highlight and understand the sexual motivations of furries, leading to questions regarding the relative strength of fandom and sexual motivations for joining and maintaining membersh...

Interest in consensually non-monogamous relationships (CNM) has been increasing in the general population in recent years. However, given the cultural dominance of monogamy and the normative expectations often imposed through socialization (i.e., mononormativity), people in CNM relationships may experience negativity, which can become internalized...

Researchers across disciplines have been studying the psychology of fans for decades. Seeking to better understand fan behavior and the various factors motivating fans, researchers have studied dozens of variables in hundreds of studies of different fan groups. To date, however, there have been relatively few attempts to integrate this sizable body...

In the present study, we examined the associations between sources of influence (anime content, anime creators, voice actors, other fans) within the anime fandom on a model of the antecedents and outcomes of global citizenship identification. Anime fans completed measures assessing sources of influence within the anime fandom and antecedents and ou...

HIV continues to be an issue among the college age population. There are many risks and groups that allow the continued spread of HIV among college students. However, colleges continue to provide information to students on the preventions and intervention of HIV.

We examined the connection between the perception of love and stigma in relationships and how much stigma needs to be present to elicit a heightened perception of love. Participants in the first study rated several relationships on the degree of stigma each one of them faced, and how much the individuals in each relationship loved each other—the pe...

In the current study, we examined the relationship between hegemonic masculinity and negative attitudes toward effeminacy with prejudice toward sex-role identities in the gay community. Participants recruited from LGBTQA+ student groups from across the United States, completed measures related to their adherence toward hegemonic masculinity, attitu...

In the present study we examined whether heterosexual vaginal intercourse is the default prototype of sex and the association between the perceived frequency of sexual activities and prejudice toward individuals who engage in those activities. Participants rated 132 sexual activities and preferences with respect to perceived frequency that others e...