After completing her Ph.D. at Kent State University in 1978, Dr. Richardson taught at the University of Georgia until 1989, serving as Associate Department Chair and as Chair of the Social Psychology Program. She taught for 10 years at Florida Atlantic University before accepting the position as Chair of the Department of Psychology at Augusta State University.

Dr. Richardson is co-author (with Robert A. Baron) of a leading textbook, Human Aggression, co-editor with J. Martin Ramirez of Cross Cultural Approaches to Research on Aggression and Reconciliation, author of several chapters on interpersonal aggression or personal relationships in textbooks or edited volumes, and author or co-author of over 50 articles in refereed professional journals and over 125 presentations at regional, national, or international conferences. She is proud of the fact that only her dissertation is a single-authored paper; most of her publications include graduate (and sometimes undergraduate) students as co-authors.

Dr. Richardson's primary research concerns the study of interpersonal aggression and conflict, with particular emphasis on gender differences in aggression, cognitive mechanisms for the control of direct aggression, and the nature, determinants, and consequences of indirect aggression in populations ranging from middle-school children to senior citizens.

Dr. Richardson has taught a variety of courses (from aggression to statistics) to both graduate and undergraduate students in a variety of instructional settings, from the typical college classroom to classrooms on military bases in Asia, to workshops in organizational settings. She has received both student-initiated and peer-initiated teaching awards, teaches a graduate class on Teaching of Psychology, and has several teaching-related publications and presentations.

Dr. Richardson is a member of about a dozen professional organizations, serves on the editorial board of Aggressive Behavior and of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, is Executive Secretary of the International Society for Research on Aggression, and Member-at-Large of the Southeastern Psychological Association. She co-founded and continues to assist with the activities of the Society of Southeastern Social Psychologists, whose annual meetings attract more than 100 faculty and students for a weekend of scientific and professional exchange.