Educational Background
Withers earned her B.A. in Communication in 1995 and her M.A. in Communication in 1997, both from the University of Maine, where she studied with John Sherblom. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication Sciences in 2002 from the University of Connecticut, where she studied with C. Arthur VanLear and Ross Buck.
Professional Career
Withers taught at Central Michigan University from 2001 to the present. She has authored manuscripts that have been published in outlets such as Personality and Individual Differences, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Western Journal of Communication, Connexions, and Human Communication.
Research Interests
Withers studies connections between the self and others, especially the emotional connections between people and the behaviors that threaten those connections. She examines the “dark” or aversive side of interpersonal relationships, including embarrassment, an emotion experienced personally but created and managed...
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Selected Bibliography
Hinck, E., Hinck, S. S., & Withers, L. A. (2013). Service-learning in prison facilities: Interaction as a source of transformation. In S. Hartnett, E. Novek, & J. Wood (Eds.), Working for justice: A handbook of prison education and activism (pp. 39–59). Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Leonard, L. G., Sherblom, J. C., Withers, L. A., & Smith, J. S. (2015). Training effective virtual teams: Presence, identity, communication openness, and conversational interactivity. Connexions, 3(1), 11–46.
VanLear, C. A., & Withers, L. A. (2016). The relational linking system and other systems for studying self-presentation (self-disclosure), acceptance-rejection, and confirmation-disconfirmation. In C. A. VanLear & D. J. Canary (Eds.), Researching interactive communication behavior: A sourcebook of methods and measures (pp. 77–92). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Withers, L. A., & Sherblom, J. C. (2008). Embarrassment: The communication of an awkward actor anticipating a negative evaluation. Human Communication, 11(2), 237–254.
Withers, L. A., & Vernon, L. L. (2006). To err is human: Embarrassment, attachment, and communication apprehension. Personality and Individual Differences, 40, 99–110.
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Withers, L.A. (2016). Withers, Lesley. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_2286-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_2286-1
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