Michael J. Cody is a Professor in the School of Communication at the University of Southern California. His research interests have focused on social influence processes, accounts and social explanations, and nonverbal correlates of deception. He has worked on a number of projects addressing social problems, including reports on school violence in Los Angeles schools, training older adult learners to use computers, assessing outcomes of child custody mediations, promoting gender equality using the media, and detecting deception during employment interviews.