James Honeycutt

He was honored as an Outstanding Scholar in Communication Theory by the Southern States Communication Association in 2013. The National Communication Association's Social Cognition Division awarded his first book on Imagined Interactions the Distinguished Book Award in 2006.

Honeycutt founded the Matchbox Interaction Lab at LSU in 2007 where individuals, couples, and groups participating in research as subjects discuss topics which are usually promoted by researchers, who then leave the room. Researchers observe the interactions in the lab through one way glass, in addition to full audio and video recording capabilities. If the research requires physiological data, the lab has the capability to record variables like heart rate and galvanic skin response. The name "Matchbox" was coined by students because when fiery conflict interactions occur between subjects based on the researchers' prompt, it's like the researcher lit a match that "sparked" the conflict.

Honeycutt was hired as an assistant professor at LSU in 1986, He received tenure and was promoted to associate professor in 1991, full professor in 2001, and received the honorific Distinguished Professor in 2012. In 1998, he served briefly as a visiting professor at UCSB. He retired from LSU as distinguished professor emeritus in 2019, and returned to his hometown of Dallas, Texas where he is a lecturer at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Honeycutt graduated in 1981 with an M.S. in interpersonal communication with a minor in statistics and research methods from Purdue University. His Master's thesis, chaired by Robert W. Norton, was "Relative Commitment of an Individual and the Discriminability of Communicator Styles Used in the Marital Relationship". He received his Ph.D. from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1987. His dissertation, "An Examination of Information Processing in Initial Interaction through Linking Input, Structure, and Outcome: Effects of Preinteraction Expectancies on Interpersonal Attraction and Interaction Structure", chaired by Dean E. Hewes, led tofive publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Honeycutt was born and raised in Dallas, Texas in 1956 to Frank and Arletha Honeycutt. He attended Lloyd V. Berkner High School, and graduated from UT-Austin in 1979, with a B.S. in interpersonal communication and a minor in social psychology. His honors thesis, advised by Robert Hooper, was "Matching of Interruptions, Talk Duration, Silence in Symmetrical and Complementary Dyads Based on Predispositions Toward Verbal Behavior".