华盛顿州立大学实验心理学博士课程旨在培养研究和教学方面高技能，创新和高产的实验心理学家。每个学生将围绕认知，生物，社会，工业/组织，健康和应用定量方法的一个或多个专业领域建立自己的学习计划。期望学位获得者对其专业领域具有高度的了解，具有广泛的一般实验心理学背景，能够发现重大的研究问题，并能熟练地运用各种策略来生成和检验由此产生的假设问题，并能够有效地传达这些想法。预计毕业生将离开华盛顿州立大学，具备充分的条件，可以成为学术界竞争性研究和教学职位以及政府和行业的竞争性研究或应用职位的成功专业人士。<br>
The doctoral program in experimental psychology at Washington State University is designed to produce highly skilled, innovative, and productive experimental psychologists in terms of research and teaching. Each student will build his/her program of study around one or more specialty areas in Cognition, Biological, Social, Industrial/Organizational, Health, and Applied Quantitative Methods. Degree recipients are expected to be highly knowledgeable about their specialty areas, to have a strong background in general experimental psychology, to be able to identify significant research problems, to be conversant with a wide variety of strategies for generating and testing hypotheses that emerge from these problems, and to be able to effectively communicate these ideas. It is expected that graduates will leave Washington State University well equipped to become successful professionals in competitive research and teaching positions in academia, as well as competitive research or applied positions in government and industry. <br><br>Health psychology in the department focuses on how biological, psychological, environmental, and cultural factors impact health and illness. Research in health psychology examines: the causes and development of illness, methods to help individuals develop healthy lifestyles to promote good health and prevent illness, interventions to help people cope with and reduce stress and pain, biopsychosocial connections with immune functioning, and factors in the recovery, rehabilitation, and psychosocial adjustment of individuals with serious health problems, including mental health problems. Faculty research interests include: child and maternal health, quality of life in medical populations, mechanisms and clinical treatment of pain, cardiovascular functioning in women, occupational health, well-being, safety, methodological and statistical approaches to health research, neuropsychological substrates of mental and physical health, substance abuse and mental health, applying social psychological perspectives to health behavior motivation and change.