Dr. Jones is Professor and Chair of Psychology at Utah Tech University. He is the founder and director of the Character Lab, a research and training initiative dedicated to the rigorous, cross-cultural study of character.
His scholarship advances the Regulated Agency Model (Jones, 2026a), a framework for understanding how people and social systems generate, govern, and direct power. This work examines why human action can be organized around cooperation and trust in some contexts, but coercion and control in others.
Within this broader program, his work on Character Foundations Theory examines character as the responsible use of power in social life. Through the Character Lab, he integrates psychological science with philosophy, anthropology, and cultural-historical analysis to build a rigorous and generalizable science of character. Current projects focus on developing theory, measures, and empirical studies of agentic capacity, governance, direction, and the conditions that support responsible action in individuals, relationships, groups, and institutions.
Professor Jones has been at Utah Tech since 2005. Prior to that he taught leadership and character development in high-stakes applied settings, including as a faculty member at the United States Military Academy at West Point. This experience informs his interest in how character functions under conditions of pressure, responsibility, and real-world consequence. He received his PhD at the State University of New York in Social and Personality Psychology and his BA in Psychology from Idaho State University. Prior to that he served four years as an active-duty Marine. He graduated from Highland High School, Hawthorne Junior High, and Chubbuck Elementary in Pocatello, Idaho.
He most commonly teaches Statistical Methods, Research Methods, Social Psychology, Theories of Personality, Relationship Science, Psychology of Morality, and Capstone Research in Psychology.
Dr. Jones is married to the world’s best person, Kirsten, and has five children, including five-year-old twin girls. He is passionate about the wilderness, solitude, music, and doughnuts. He combines these loves on solo backpacking trips deep in the backcountry of Yellowstone and Zion (yes, dougnuts can be freeze dried).