{"id":5,"date":"2012-10-25T22:04:15","date_gmt":"2012-10-25T22:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/template-faculty01\/?page_id=5"},"modified":"2025-10-24T11:22:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T15:22:14","slug":"home","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/overton\/","title":{"rendered":"Jon Overton"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/overton\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1307\/2022\/08\/2020-Professional-Photo_cropped.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"667\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/overton\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1307\/2022\/08\/2020-Professional-Photo_cropped-667x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-48\" style=\"aspect-ratio:0.6519337016574586;width:110px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/overton\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1307\/2022\/08\/2020-Professional-Photo_cropped-667x1024.jpg 667w, https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/overton\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1307\/2022\/08\/2020-Professional-Photo_cropped-195x300.jpg 195w, https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/overton\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1307\/2022\/08\/2020-Professional-Photo_cropped.jpg 721w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 667px) 100vw, 667px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n<p>I am an assistant professor of sociology and public policy at UNC Charlotte. I earned my PhD in Sociology in 2022 from Kent State University.<\/p>\n<p>As a social psychologist in the group processes tradition, I use theory and quantitative data to advance sociological knowledge in the field&#8217;s two core social problems: 1) breakdowns in social solidarity and 2) the sources of inequality. I address <em>breakdowns<\/em> <em>in social solidarity<\/em> by developing theoretical explanations for the emergence and maintenance of political polarization. I explore the <em>sources of inequality<\/em> using the status characteristics tradition to explain the emergence of informal hierarchies in small groups. Throughout my work, I pay careful attention to how stereotyping and self-fulfilling prophecies contribute to social problems.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/overton\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1307\/2025\/08\/Overton-Current-Vita.pdf\">CV<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/citations?user=sTVPTtgAAAAJ&amp;hl=en&amp;authuser=1\">Google Scholar<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am an assistant professor of sociology and public policy at UNC Charlotte. I earned my PhD in Sociology in 2022 from Kent State University. As a social psychologist in the group processes tradition, I use theory and quantitative data to advance sociological knowledge in the field&#8217;s two core social problems: 1) breakdowns in social [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4059,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/overton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/overton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/overton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/overton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4059"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/overton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/overton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/overton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5\/revisions\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/overton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}