Jeff Elison

Professional Information

Jeff spent 16 years in the software industry working for Intel and Hewlett-Packard before making a mid-life shift to study psychology. Having completed his doctorate in 2003 and a NIMH postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Denver in 2005, Jeff joined SUU in August, 2005 as a member of the psychology department.  His research interests focus on motivation and emotion, in particular self-conscious emotions such as shame, guilt, embarrassment, and humiliation.  Jeff developed the Compass of Shame Scale (CoSS) to assess the use of shame management scripts. The CoSS has been translated into Spanish, Hungarian, and Taiwanese, as well as extended with an adaptive scale, a violence scale, a reduced language version for adolescents and adults with limited reading skills, and a version to allow teachers to rate students.  The CoSS has been used to explore relations among the four poles of the Compass of Shame and self-esteem, depression, anxiety, hostility, anger, and psychopathy.  Jeff's most recent projects have explored definitions of, and distinctions between, shame, guilt, embarrassment, and humiliation, as well as the link between humiliation and violence.

Jeff was born and raised in Pennsylvania, worked for Intel in Oregon for 3 years, and then moved to Colorado for 20 years where he worked for Hewlett-Packard before returning to graduate school in psychology.  Aside from teaching SUU’s stellar students, Jeff’s passions include rock climbing, mountain biking, and snowboarding.  For all those reasons and the small town atmosphere, Jeff loves Cedar City. 

| Jeff Elison |