Short CV

After graduating from Hacettepe University with a B.S. degree in Psychology, he continued his graduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin where he received his Ph.D. in "Experimental Psychology / Behavioral Neuroscience". He was appointed in Associate Professor and Full Professorship positions with the studies he carried out at the Izmir University of Economics. Dr. Çetinkaya worked in the Psychology Department of Ankara University for a while. He functioned as a member of the Turkish Psychologists Association Accreditation Board, and Ankara University the board of Support Against Mobbing. He is interested in several neurobiological phenomena such as hemispheric asymmetries and specializations in humans and non-human animals, prevention of the return of the extinguished fear memories by interfering with the process of memory reconsolidation. Recently, he runs research projects pertaining to the organizational and activational effects of sex steroids such as estrogen, testosterone, and neuropeptides such as oxytocin and vasopressin on the mind and behavior. He also investigates inhibitory spillover effects in the control of unwanted ruminational thoughts. He generally adopts an evolutionary perspective as the theoretical framework. He enjoys testing evolutionary psychological hypotheses in well-controlled laboratory settings. He played a major role in the establishment of several modern psychology laboratories in Turkey and developed some cutting-edge techniques to study the mind and behavior in various species. He is the author of many published scientific papers and holds several awards, Çetinkaya is married with two children.