The Faces and Minds of Psychological Science

Elizabeth Loftus is an internationally recognized expert in the study of human memory, particularly the malleability of memories. Her extensive research shows that memory is highly susceptible to distortion and manipulation, and that people can vividly recall events that never happened. Loftus developed the “Lost in the Mall” technique, or Familial Informant Narrative Procedure, in which a study participant is told about a time the participant got lost in a shopping mall. Even though the event didn’t happen, a significant percentage of participants developed a false memory for the experience. Her research on false memory, the reliability of eyewitness reports, and memories “recovered” through therapy has affected how law enforcement, courts, and psychologists consider eyewitness testimony. She has served as an expert witness or consultant about false memories in hundreds of legal cases, including the McMartin preschool molestation case; the trial of Oliver North; the Rodney King beating; litigation involving Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart, and Scooter Libby; and Bosnian war crimes trials in The Hague. Loftus is a member of the National Academy of Sciences the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Watch Inside the Psychologist's Studio with Elizabeth Loftus.

Where we come from and the cultural environment we were raised in has a big impact on many aspects of our lives. James Jackson's research focuses on how culture influences our health (both mental and physical) during our lives, attitude changes, and social support. Jackson has contributed enormously to our understanding of race relations and racism, not just in the United States, but around the world. For example, his research has highlighted how racial discrimination can affect physical and mental health and treatment. He has conducted very comprehensive social, political behavior, and mental and physical health surveys on African American and Black Caribbean populations. Among the goals of these surveys was the documentation of the physical, mental, emotional, and economic conditions of African Americans at the start of this century. Jackson is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academies of Science and Engineering, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a founding member of the Aging Society Research Network of the MacArthur Foundation. He is a recipient of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for his lifetime of significant intellectual achievements in applied psychological research. Watch Jackson’s Keynote Address at the 24th APS Annual Convention.

Facial expressions and body language are among the most powerful forms of nonverbal communication, and can reveal a great deal about emotion. Beatrice de Gelder investigates the neuroscience of automatic, nonconscious responses we have to the unspoken, emotional cues we observe in others. De Gelder pioneered the neuroscience of body language and has conducted innovative studies in a number of areas, including face recognition and emotional body expressions. In a landmark experiment, she and her colleagues showed that, when exposed to pictures of faces showing strong emotions, people with visual impairment make the same involuntary facial movements as people with normal sight. Blind people, for instance, smile in response to an image of a happy person, even though they can’t see the picture. De Gelder’s prolific line of research on nonconscious perception has fueled new perspectives on emotion deficits in schizophrenia and autism

Jeansok Kim investigates how stress influences behavior. His work has shown that stress likely affects learning and memory by changing electrical activity in a section of the brain called the hippocampus. Research in Kim’s lab has also revealed that these electrical changes are mediated by N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors that are found in the brain. Kim’s laboratory also uses behavioral animal models to test what forms of learning are affected by stress and to study the processes that allow animals to learn. He is the recipient of a James McKeen Cattell Fund Fellowship.

Adolescence is widely seen as a period of moodiness and risk-taking. Much of that stems from uneven development in the brain during the teenage years. Eveline Crone has used brain imaging technology to identify this imbalance, and to study how it effects teenagers’ sensitivity to emotional stimuli. Her work has shown that during adolescence, the brain regions that respond to pleasure and sensation-seeking develop discordantly with regions associated with reasoning. That can explain some of the impulsive behavior typically associated with teenagers. But Crone has also found that adolescents are extremely creative, due to an overproduction of grey matter in certain areas of the brain. Her work is helping parents, educators, and society at large better understand this special phase in human development.

One of the early advocates of using quantitative methods in psychology, James McKeen Cattell studied under William Wundt, the “father” of experimental psychology, in Germany. Cattell, the first professor of psychology in the United States, was interested in the quantitative measurement of intelligence. His goals led him to pursue classic studies looking at differences between individuals’ reaction times during simple mental tasks, such as naming colors. Although Cattell’s “mental tests” have been replaced with more reliable intelligence measures, Cattell was a tireless advocate for experimental psychology and his work helped convince the academic world that psychology was not just a “pseudoscience.” He said that knowing certain things (i.e., what we can remember or someone’s reaction time) are facts of science which must be translated into an understanding of what we can learn from those traits and “disentangle the complex factors of heredity and environment.” To foster his interest in applied psychology, Cattell formed The Psychological Corporation to market psychological tests and related materials to educational, corporate and government clients. Cattell was also known for his work in scientific publishing. He founded the journal Psychological Review, Popular Science Monthly (which later became Popular Science), and from 1894 until his death also owned the preeminent journal Science and established it as the journal of the Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1942, Cattell established the James McKeen Cattell Fund to provide researchers with financial support to extend their university sabbatical to conduct scientific research and promote the dissemination of psychological science. The Association for Psychological Science (APS) established the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award to honor individuals for their lifetime of significant intellectual achievements in applied psychological research and their impact on a critical problem in society at large.

Many of us battle with fear and anxiety in our daily lives, but David Barlow was one of the first clinical psychologists to take this fight into the laboratory. Not only did he conduct much of the research characterizing the etiology of anxiety, but Barlow also can be credited with many of the breakthroughs in the treatment of anxiety disorders. His use of situational and interoceptive exposure as a treatment for panic disorders laid the foundation for the wider development of empirically validated cognitive behavioral therapies that have come to replace less scientifically sound treatment methodologies. In order to combat the surfeit of disorder-specific treatments that abound in today’s clinical environment, Barlow is now focusing on developing a transdiagnostic treatment model. This model unifies the core principles of all emotional treatment models and thus can be applied to many different psychopathologies. Barlow hopes this more universal approach will enable treatments to be more readily disseminated to clinicians and, ultimately, to the patients who need them most. He is a recipient of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for his lifetime of significant intellectual achievements in applied psychological research and their impact on a critical problem in society. Watch Barlow’s Award Address at the 24th APS Annual Convention.

Elliot Aronson is perhaps best known for his experiments refining the theory of cognitive dissonance, which states that people will change their attitudes or behaviors to reduce cognitive discomfort caused by performing actions that are inconsistent with their beliefs. He is also recognized for his work seeking to understand and reduce intergroup and racial conflict -- leading to the creation of the Jigsaw Classroom intervention program. Aronson is known for applying theory and research to real-world problems, and for challenging researchers to adapt their findings for use in everyday life. His textbook The Social Animal, has been widely used for over 40 years.  Aronson is the only person to have won all three of APA's major awards for distinguished writing, distinguished teaching, and distinguished research. The Review of General Psychology listed him as one of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century.  He is also the recipient of the Donald Campbell Award, the Gordon Allport Prize and the Association for Psychological Science (APS) William James Fellow Award for his lifetime of significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology. Watch Elliot Aronson: The Intersection of Art and Science.

After being assigned to an academic externship at a unit in a London psychiatric hospital where violent and self-injurious patients were treated, Matthew Nock became interested in the question of why people intentionally harm themselves. Ever since that experience, Nock has pursued research to deepen scientific understanding of suicide and self-injury. His studies have approached self-injury behaviors from multiple angles to better understand how such behaviors develop, can be predicted, and prevented. Nock collaborated with Mahzarin Banaji to adapt the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure suicidal thoughts in teenagers.

Gordon Bower is one of the premier experimental psychologists and learning theorists. Bower’s research focuses on the ways that various cognitive processes – such as imagery, emotion, and reading and language comprehension – relate to memory, learning and reasoning. Bower was one of the first researchers to examine the effects of mood on memory, and his research has greatly contributed to our knowledge of state-dependent memory and learning.  Bower’s service as Chief Scientific Advisor to the NIMH Director and his appointment as leader of an NIMH task force commissioned to review the state of mental health knowledge and research have positively impacted the direction of psychological science. His pioneering work earned him one of the United States’ highest scientific honors, the National Medal of Science. A Past President of the  Association for Psychological Science (APS), Bower is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the Howard Crosby Warren Medal, the Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, the Wilbur Cross Medal for Distinguished Scientific Contributions, and the APS William James Fellow Award for his lifetime of significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology. Watch Inside the Psychologist’s Studio: An Interview with Gordon Bower.

Karen Matthews, renowned for her many contributions to the formation and growth of health psychology, helped set the stage for expansion of the field through her editorship of Health Psychology, advisory roles at National Heart Blood Institute, and through her participation in the landmark National Working Group on Education and Training in Health Psychology. At the University of Pittsburgh, she initiated an innovative Cardiovascular Behavioral Medicine training program that provided multidisciplinary training to many individuals who later became leaders in the health psychology field. Matthews’ research accomplishments have included seminal work on childhood antecedents of coronary heart disease risk, women's health and menopause, and the effects of socioeconomic status on health. She is the recipient of a 25th anniversary APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for her groundbreaking research in health psychology. Read more about Matthews’s research here.

Geraldine Dawson’s research has contributed greatly to the growing body of evidence about autism spectrum disorder (ASD), especially in young children. Dawson has approached ASD from all angles, from conducting studies of early brain and behavioral development to genetic research.  She pioneered the use of event-related potentials to study early brain function in very young children with ASD.  Her main focus, however, lies in early diagnosis and intervention. She was one of the first researchers to demonstrate that autism symptoms could be recognized in young infants. Recently, with Sally Rogers, Dawson helped develop the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) for behavioral intervention for toddlers with autism. She empirically validated this model in the first-ever randomized, controlled trial of a comprehensive behavioral intervention for toddlers with autism, and the results revealed that children who received ESDM showed significant improvements in IQ, language, and adaptive behavior. Dawson is a recipient of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for her lifetime of significant intellectual achievements in applied psychological research. Watch Dawson’s Award Address at the 24th APS Annual Convention.

Kathleen McDermott’s recent work focuses on comparing the human abilities of remembering the past and envisioning specific future scenarios. Her research shows the neural substrates of these two actions to be interrelated, suggesting that envisioning the future may be impossible without a recollection of the past. Earlier work by McDermott included development of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm, which demonstrates that when given a list of related words there is a high probability of one falsely remembering an unlisted associated word. Additionally, using both behavioral and neuroimaging techniques McDermott studies why retrieval practice is beneficial in promoting retention of information over the long term.

Considered one of the world’s most influential cognitive psychologists, Anne Treisman developed a classic psychological model of human visual attention. The feature integration theory of attention proposes a two-stage model for our perception of objects. The pre-attentive phase occurs automatically, before conscious awareness. In this stage, her research suggests, we register the elementary features of a visual stimulus, before our minds have grouped those features or bound them to an object. In the second phase, called the focused attention stage, we combine the features to perceive the specific object. Treisman’s work has formed the basis for thousands of experiments in vision, cognitive, and neurological sciences. Her pioneering research on attention led President Barack Obama to award her the National Medal of Science.

John Weisz uses psychological science to help children and adolescents overcome emotional and behavioral problems—including depression, anxiety, and misconduct.  Following his Deployment-Focused Model of intervention development and testing, Weisz uses randomized controlled trials and meta-analyses to identify interventions that will succeed in the community clinic and school settings where young people most often receive mental health care. Through his Harvard Lab for Youth Mental Health, Weisz and his team carry out multiple projects with a network of collaborators, including researchers from diverse disciplines, policymakers and government leaders, clinic and school personnel, and the true experts: families who use the mental health care system. Weisz is the recipient of a 25th anniversary APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for bringing science and practice together to improve youth mental health care. Read more about Weisz’s research here.

In order to effectively communicate with another person, we need to know something about his or her mental state: how they are feeling, what they are thinking, and what motivates them. Jason Mitchell is using brain imaging techniques to study how we function socially, an example of the growing field of social neuroscience. His research has clarified two characteristics of social cognition: first, that social thought is different from other types of thinking, and second, that one of the ways we understand the minds of others is by referring to our own mental state. In 2010, Mitchell was among the inaugural recipients of the APS Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions. Q&A with Jason Mitchell

Poor people are the subject of many negative stereotypes, including the assumption that they are inherently incapable of making sound financial decisions. But APS Fellow Eldar Shafir has demonstrated that the cognitive load and bandwidth limitations imposed by living with scarcity can lead to bad financial choices that often trap people in a cycle of poverty. Shafir studies decision making, judgment, and behavioral economics. His recent research has focused on decision making in contexts of poverty and on the application of behavioral research to policy. In various experiments, Shafir and his colleagues have shown that, when faced with financial stress (but not otherwise), poor people fare worse on cognitive tasks than well-off people. His work shows that juggling a life of poverty consumes mental resources, which can distort decision making in ways that exacerbate poor behaviors under financial hardship.

Janellen Huttenlocher has published on a range of research topics, including language, spatial coding in adults and children, quantitative development, and memory. Huttenlocher has been particularly interested in the role of the child’s environment in the development of cognitive skills. One of her most famous findings is that the verbal behavior of parents and teachers not only determined children’s vocabulary growth, but also their grammatical learning. Huttenlocher has also conducted research on conceptual representation and memory, including the role of concepts in people’s memories of events. Her research reveals that if people are uncertain of an event’s position within a chunk of time, they err toward the middle; asked what day they had been visited by an interviewer four days to 75 days earlier, the errors tended to run toward Wednesday. But they were able to distinguish whether the visit occurred on a weekday or weekend. Huttenlocher also has influenced generations of young psychologists through her mentorship and teaching. Her contributions to the future of psychology has been far-reaching and profound and she is the recipient of a 25th anniversary APS William James Fellow Award for her significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology. Read more about Huttenlocher’s researchhere.

Carol S. Dweck's empirical work has revealed that when we see ourselves as possessing fixed attributes, we blind ourselves to our potential for growth and prematurely give up on engaging in constructive, self-improving behaviors. In contrast, seeing the self as a developmental work in progress can lead to the acquisition of new skills and capabilities. This theoretical framework has been used to address a variety of societal concerns, such as achievement gaps between ethnic or gender groups. Dweck finds that victims of negative stereotypes who have (or are taught to adopt) a growth mindset can then take a more mastery-oriented stance to achieve their goals even in unfavorable learning environments. As a result, they can often excel despite the obstacles they face. The impact of Dweck's work has spread to other domains beside academic achievement - including willpower, conflict resolution in the Middle East, racial prejudice, and adolescent aggression. Her rigorous research has been applied extensively in schools and organizations to empower children and adults around the world, and she is a recipient of an APS 25th anniversary James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for bridging disparate fields of developmental, social, and personality psychology. Read more about Dweck's research here.

There’s no doubt about it, rejection hurts. One of the goals of Naomi Eisenberger’s research is to understand why.  She looks at why emotional and physical well-being are so strongly affected by social relationships. She examines the underlying neural systems of complex socioemotional experiences (e.g. the rewards of social inclusion and the pains of social rejection) using neuroimaging techniques. Her work suggests that some of the neural regions that typically process physical pain may also be activated when experiencing social pain. She recently started exploring the neural underpinnings of positive feelings associated with social connection. In 2011, Eisenberger received a Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science (APS). Q&A with Naomi I. Eisenberger

In scientific experiments as in architecture, it’s all about design. Patrick Onghena studies methodology and statistics in order to help other investigators properly set up their studies and analyze their results. He is especially interested in optimizing single-case experimental design so that researchers can glean as much reliable information as possible from small data sets. His recommendations have influenced the field of methodology and have been used in several studies on pain, depression, chronic fatigue, language pathology, learning disorders, relational aggression, and education. Onghena’s other area of expertise is meta-analysis, an increasingly vital tool for examining large volumes of data from many different studies that all address similar hypotheses. He has applied his meta-analytical skills to replicated single-case experiments and to a range of questions, like the possible pain-relieving effect of antidepressants and the effect of early prevention programs for families with young children at risk for physical child abuse and neglect.

Gabriella Vigliocco investigates how our brains integrate language and cognition, examining a variety of languages, both spoken and signed, and using tools from several disciplines, including neuroscience and experimental psychology. Over the years, her work has contributed to our understanding of how we represent meaning, how cognition shapes languages and how language shapes cognition. She has challenged many traditional ideas about language, like the notion that language is a modular and purely symbolic system that does not entail direct links with our sensory-motor and affective experience. She has developed theoretical and computational models of how meaning is represented and how sentences are produced that account for language performance in terms of interactions among different types of linguistic and non-linguistic information. She is now using these models to tackle questions like how abstract concepts such as justice and courage are formed and processed in our brains.

As part of his efforts to develop empirical tests to examine personality and to understand the mechanisms that enable self-control, Walter Mischel conducted a series of experiments known as the Stanford Marshmallow Tests. In the experiment, Mischel gave a child a choice between a single marshmallow, obtainable immediately, or two marshmallows obtainable by waiting for them. He found that children who were able to delay gratification and waited longer to get more marshmallows (or other treats), were later in life better adjusted, more dependable and able to tolerate frustration, and as high school students scored much higher on the collegiate Scholastic Aptitude Test. Follow-ups with these participants 40 years later are also revealing important differences in cognitive and neural mechanisms (e.g. revealed by brain scans) linked to their self-control behavior over the life course. Mischel’s research looks at the psycho-social and physiological mechanisms that underlie adaptive self and emotional regulation in hopes of further understanding how these factors impact consequential real-world behaviors including mental and physical health. His theory that personality cannot be separated from the contexts and the specific situations with which the person interacts revolutionized the field of personality psychology and sparked the development of new methods and models to study individual differences in social behavior. Mischel is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a Past President of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and is the recipient of the field’s highest honors in areas ranging from clinical to social to personality psychology, including more than 50 years of continuous research support from the National Institutes of Health, two consecutive National Institute of Mental Health MERIT Awards, and the 2011 Grawemeyer Award.

Brenda Milner greatly expanded our understanding of brain functioning through her study of the cognitive deficits associated with temporal and frontal lobe injury. Her most famous work involved a series of experiments with patient H.M., a patient who had most of his medial temporal lobe removed in order to control his severe epilepsy. Although the surgery was successful in controlling his seizures it left him with anterograde amnesia. Milner’s experiments with H.M. not only identified specific brain areas responsible for memory functioning, but also indicated that the brain had more than one memory acquisition system. Her research demonstrated lateralization of function within the brain and provided evidence that functional reorganization can occur after brain damage. Her more recent work focuses on understanding the neural substrates responsible for second language learning and on identifying brain areas responsible for higher-order language processing. Milner is a Companion of the Order of Canada, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Society of London. She is a recipient of an Association for Psychological Science (APS) William James Fellow Award for her lifetime of significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology, as well as the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize and the Balzan Prize. Watch Inside the Psychologist’s Studio with Brenda Milner.

Psychology just wouldn’t be the same without William James, known as the father of modern American psychology. He initially earned a degree at Harvard Medical School, but rather than practice medicine, James wandered into the fields of philosophy and psychology. He acknowledged that he was a newbie, writing that “I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.” But that didn’t stop James. A prolific writer, he published books and essays on topics ranging from emotion theory to free will, and wrote up until the day he died. James is best known for his classic psychology text The Principles of Psychology, a work that had a profound impact on the field of psychological science. Most researchers and theorists would shudder to think what modern psychology would be like if James decided to do something with that MD. The Association for Psychological Science (APS) established the William James Fellow Award to honor individuals for their lifetime of significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology.

Throughout his career Steele has been interested in processes of self-evaluation, in particular in how people cope with threatening self-images. This work has led to a general theory of self-affirmation processes. A second interest, growing out of the first, is a theory of how group stereotypes—such as stereotypes about African Americans in academic domains and women in quantitative domains—can influence intellectual performance and academic identities. Third, he has investigated addictive behaviors, particularly alcohol addiction, where his work with several colleagues has led to a theory of “alcohol myopia,” in which many of alcohol's social and stress-reducing effects are explained as a consequence of its narrowing of perceptual and cognitive functioning. Steele is a recipient of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) William James Fellow Award for his lifetime of significant intellectual achievements to the basic science of psychology. Watch Inside the Psychologist’s Studio with Claude Steele and Elizabeth Phelps.

Living and working in a diverse community offers many opportunities, but also many challenges. Jennifer Richeson studies the challenges of navigating diverse environments for both members of dominant groups and members of socially-devalued, minority groups. Using techniques ranging from the examination of nonverbal behavior to the study of brain scans, Richeson and her team have found that most people find it difficult to interact with others across racial boundaries. Indeed, the effort individuals put forth during cross-race interactions, for instance, can leave them cognitively drained. For example, a white individual is likely to perform less well on a puzzle after being interviewed about race-related topics by a black interviewer (and vice versa), suggesting that individuals are devoting considerable mental resources in their attempts to avoid saying and doing “the wrong thing” during the interaction. In addition to studying interracial contact, Richeson is also investigating how racial bias affects health and decision-making, the consequences of managing a stigmatized identity, and intergroup trust. The MacArthur Foundation awarded Richeson with a fellowship in recognition of the creativity and promise of her work.

When social groups interact, notions of “insiders” and “outsiders” develop. Using a variety of approaches – psychological, physiological, and neurobiological – Valerie Purdie-Vaughns seeks to understand relationships between social groups and reduce intergroup bias and conflict. In particular, she investigates how minority and majority groups interact, focusing on experiments that closely mirror real-world scenarios. For instance, several recent studies have examined how the anxiety of feeling stigmatized can lead to dysregulated eating and psychological distress. By linking neuroendocrine and stress biomarkers to contextual features of real-world settings, Purdie-Vaughns is able to understand the interaction between physiological mechanisms and environmental factors underlying stigmatization and group relations.  Linking biology to social contexts allows her to better design effective solutions to social problems.

Thomas Griffiths developed mathematical models of higher level cognition. He focuses on the abstract computational problems that underlie inductive human cognition, such as probabilistic reasoning, learning causal relationships, acquiring and using language, and inferring the structure of categories. He researches the ideal solutions to those problems using ideas from probability theory and Bayesian statistics, used to calculate the likelihood of a hypothesis. These statistical tools allow him to analyze human learning and link computer science research to artificial intelligence and machine learning. His innovative research won him a 2011 Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science (APS). Q&A with Thomas L. Griffiths

Philip Johnson-Laird, studies how people infer and deduce the possibility and probability of something happening. He has developed computer programs which quantify the validity of certain deductions, paving the way toward greater understanding of deductive reasoning and thinking that challenge the idea that people have the laws of logic and probability in their heads. Johnson-Lairds book Mental Models: Toward a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference, and Consciousness unifies theories of comprehension, inference, and consciousness. He also studies emotions and cognition. Individuals suffering from psychological illnesses, such as depression or anxiety, in fact reason better than healthy individuals but only about topics concerning their illnesses. An avid composer and jazz pianist, he also studies and teaches the psychology of music. Johnson-Laird is a recipient of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) William James Fellow Award for his lifetime of significant intellectual achievements to the basic science of psychology. Watch Johnson-Laird’s Award Address at the 23rd APS Annual Convention.

Larry Jacoby is one of the world’s foremost researchers on memory — specifically on the difference between conscious and automatic memory. The distinction is useful for better understanding age-related differences in memory performance. His studies reveal, for example, that our ability to recall specific events declines as we age, spurring us to rely on unconscious, automatic memories. These unconscious influences can be misleading, often tricking people into remembering events that never really occurred. In addition to further refining theory about memory, one of Jacoby’s fundamental research goals is to develop procedures for the diagnosis and treatment of memory deficits.

Shelley E. Taylors research explores our ability to perceive some stressful situations in ways that have both psychological and biological benefits. Taylors research shows that in some circumstances, we can develop “positive illusions” – such as an illusion of personal control or unrealistic optimism about the future – to handle stressful situations. Taylors tend-and-befriend model illustrates how people, especially women, will come together support one another in stressful situations. Her lab is examining the genetic, early environmental, and neurocognitive origins of these coping mechanisms and their benefits. Taylor is a recipient of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) William James Fellow Award for her lifetime of significant intellectual achievements to the basic science of psychology.

Silvia Koller’s research focuses on children who have experienced homelessness, sexual abuse, or familial violence. Koller explores the impact of these circumstances on psychological development, and uses this information to better characterize the concept of resilience. Her hope is that understanding resilience, which she defines as a process rather than an individual trait, will lead to programs and policies that help children cope with adversity and prevent future generations from experiencing such hardship. Koller uses an ecological approach, viewing children’s development in the context of their family, community, school, and society. Using this framework to understand development and resilience, she has identified several factors, including a strong social support system and a high capacity for experiencing and expressing emotions, that aid the process of resilience. Her findings have helped shape child protection policies in Brazil,  changing how authorities investigate child maltreatment and help children cope with abuse, and informing child maltreatment prevention programs.

For centuries, philosophers, economists, and social scientists assumed that human beings are generally rational. Daniel Kahneman upended that assumption with findings that continue to reverberate through several scientific disciplines and have enormous implications for public policy.  In his groundbreaking work with the late Amos Tversky, Kahneman, one of the most influential psychologists of our time, showed that when we face uncertain situations, we don’t examine the information in ways that are characterized as rational.  Instead, we take mental shortcuts that can lead to seemingly illogical decisions.  Kahneman and Tversky published a series of seminal articles on judgment and decision-making that led to their prospect theory. That theory explained how we avoid risk when making decisions that offer a potential gain, and take risks when making decisions that could lead to a certain loss. Among other things, it explains why investors hold onto losing stocks too long and sell winning stocks too soon. Kahneman and Tversky’s research led to the field of behavioral economics, the study of the effects of social, cognitive, and emotional factors on economic decisions. In the 1990s, Kahneman shifted the focus of his research to hedonic psychology—the study of what makes life and experiences pleasant or unpleasant. In 2002, Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work with Tversky, and in 2013 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. His best-selling book Thinking Fast and Slow summarized his research over the decades and was selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of 2011. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Kahneman is also the recipient of the APS William James Fellow Award for his outstanding contributions to scientific psychology. Watch Inside the Psychologist’s Studio with Daniel Kahneman

Evaluation is something people do every day, whether they are assessing their to-do list or forming opinions about a book they’re reading. William Cunningham is investigating how evaluating other people or objects leads to emotional responses. Through a combination of social psychological and cognitive neuroscience techniques, Cunningham has found that affective states (in other words, emotional states) are built moment to moment by multiple processes that link together relevant information about the person’s environment with their own personal attitudes. He has studied these processes in various constructs including the study of prejudice, decision-making, political attitudes, morality and emotional development in children. Through his work, Cunningham is hoping to build a more complete picture of the processes behind emotion. His groundbreaking research made him one of the 2011 recipients of the Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science (APS). Q&A with William A. Cunningham

People tend to proceed through life trying to act their age. But the pioneering research of Ellen Langer suggests that adopting the attitude of a younger person may actually have health benefits. In a classic 1981 study, she had old men live in a retreat that was retrofitted to look like 1959, while they pretended that they were living in that year. She and her colleagues found that the men experienced improvements in vision, strength, and other abilities, and that they actually looked younger as well. Langer’s mind-body research indicates that just as social cues can make us feel old, other social cues can make us feel and act young.

Whether in the creative arts, athletics, work, or spiritual practice, happiness lies in working to expand one’s skill level. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has devoted his career to studying what makes people happy. Building on years of detailed research, Csikszentmihalyi created the term “flow” to describe the experience of being completely immersed in an activity for its own sake. When someone is in a state of flow, self-consciousness disappears and sense of time becomes distorted, according to Csikszentmihalyi’s research. “An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake,” he once wrote, “with little concern for what they will get out of it, even when it is difficult or dangerous.”

Scott Lilienfeld is both a researcher of and advocate for psychological science. His clinical work has primarily focused on psychopathy; he developed the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI-R), a 154-item personality test developed to be taken by general, rather than clinical, populations. The PPI-R provides an indication of traits associated with psychopathy without linking them to specific behaviors. Additionally, Lilienfeld has devoted much of his work to correcting the widely misunderstood nature of psychopathy, which is still commonly — but falsely — believed to be a signifier of violent tendencies and psychotic disorders. He has expanded this pursuit to include debunking pseudoscience and common psychological myths of all kinds, such as the idea that “opposites attract” or that people only use 10% of their brain, in addition to providing guidance for people so they can recognize a bogus psychological claim when they see one. Lilienfeld has also examined the related issue of why the general public often views psychological research as an unscientific pursuit, and he has made recommendations for how individuals and institutions can convey the scientific rigor of psychology to general as well as clinical populations.

What influences children’s development? Sandra Scarr’s research shows the impact of genes, daycare, adoption, parental influence, and intervention programs on the development of children. Her work with identical and fraternal twins and her use of adoption studies greatly enhanced the understanding of the genetic influences associated with the development of intelligence. Scarr’s research  on child poverty, child care, and children’s education has had far-reaching and lasting influence on public policy in those areas.  . Scarr also served as CEO of Kinder Care Learning Centers, the largest day-care provider in the US. She is a Past President of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), as well as a founding co-editor of the APS journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Scarr is a recipient of the APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for her lifetime of significant intellectual achievements in applied psychological research.

Are wars, rivalries, and other conflicts an inevitable part of intergroup relations? Marilynn Brewer says no. Internationally recognized for her research on social identity, collective decision making, prejudice, and intergroup relations, Brewer showed that people attach themselves to a group not because of ill feelings toward other groups, but because they simply are looking for a place of trust and security. Brewer is particularly recognized for her theory of optimal distinctiveness, based on the idea that the conflicting costs and benefits of sustaining an optimal group size would have shaped social motives at the individual level. The theory posited that we have distinct, and opposing, drives to belong to groups and to assert our individuality. As we feel more included in a group, our need to differentiate ourselves becomes more salient. This motivates us to identify with distinctive groups that can satisfy both needs simultaneously. Brewer is an APS Past President and recipient of a special 25th anniversary APS William James Fellow Award for her lifetime of significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology. Read more about Brewer’s research here.

Statistics has been called “the grammar of science.” Few understand this idea better than Geoff Cumming, whose research explores statistical cognition, or how we use and interpret statistical methods. He is particularly interested in replication, and much of his work has examined the difference between using p values and confidence intervals, two statistical methods for evaluating differences between experimental groups (like a drug vs. a placebo), to assess statistical uncertainty and study repeatability. Though reporting statistical significance with p values is more common in most scientific disciplines, Cumming has found these values to be unreliable, varying greatly between repetitions of an experiment, while confidence intervals often provide better insight into a study’s results and their replicability. He has used these findings to urge psychological researchers in fields ranging from giftedness to clinical psychology to report confidence intervals and effect sizes, and also to use meta-analysis, in order to improve the reliability of their statistical analyses. He refers to these better techniques as 'the new statistics': www.thenewstatistics.com. He is author of Understanding The New Statistics.

Whether it’s before a big presentation, during an exam, or after grades have been posted, at some point or another, everyone experiences stress in school. Sian Beilock’s research analyzes how stress in academic settings affects performance. She is interested in various academic stressors such as the chronic stress that a female math major might experience from the negative stereotype that “men are superior to women in math,” the pressure that most people experience while taking a high-stakes college admissions test, and the anxieties some hold about their performance in a particular academic area (e.g., math anxiety). Her innovative and unique research enables her to get a deeper understanding of why poor performance occurs in stressful academic situations and to generate interventions to alleviate performance impediments. She is author of the book, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal about Getting in Right When You Have To (http://sianbeilock.com). In 2011, Beilock received a Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science (APS). Q&A with Sian Beilock

  Traumatic stress not only affects our brains, but can also strike us at the cellular level. Iris-Tatjana Kolassa explores the biological, particularly the molecular, changes that occur after situations of extreme stress. She is also studying whether therapeutic interventions can reverse such alterations. Kolassa’s work has been of increasing influence on an international scale as it signals a paradigmatic breakthrough, creating the scientific sub-discipline of “molecular psychology,” which employs molecular biology for the advancement of psychological science. It uniquely demonstrates how molecular methods may be incorporated into the system sciences of clinical psychology and behavioral neuroscience. Additionally, she investigates genetic risk factors that contribute to the development of a fear network in which memories of traumatic events are stored.  As part of her work, she collaborates intensively with partners from molecular biology, molecular toxicology, immunology, genetics, and molecular medicine. She is the recipient of an APS Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions. Q&A with Iris-Tatjana Kolassa  

Suparna Rajarams research focuses on memory and amnesia, particularly how we recall past experiences and acquire and retain new knowledge. She investigates the differences between implicit (unconscious) memory and explicit (conscious) recollection as well as the components of episodic (i.e. autobiographical details, times, places) and semantic (i.e. meanings, concepts) memory, and familiarity. Rajaram is also interested in how attentional demands in our environment lead us to ignore salient information, thus inhibiting expression of new memories. Rajarams new line of research focuses on how collaboration with others may improve memory.

Michael Gazzaniga, a Past President of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), is widely considered to be one of the fathers of the field of cognitive neuroscience, founding the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and serving as Editor-in-Chief of The Cognitive Neurosciences – considered to be the sourcebook for that field. He is credited with being the first researcher to examine split brain patients in order to understand whether some cognitive functions are predominantly performed in one brain hemisphere or the other. Gazzaniga’s examination of split brain patients and his contributions to the field have greatly enhanced our understanding of lateralization of cognitive function within the brain, and how the two brain hemispheres communicate. Gazzaniga is a member of the National Academy of Sciences a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Watch Inside the Psychologist’s Studio with Michael Gazzaniga. Watch Gazzaniga's Keynote Address at the 25th APS Annual Convention.

The famous Bobo doll experiment showed that children learn through observation, not just through reward and punishment. In that classic study, Albert Bandura showed that children who had watched adults beat an inflatable clown doll learned to model the same aggressive behavior. This study marked an important shift in the field of psychology toward a social–cognitive model of learning. For almost 60 years, Bandura’s work in the fields of social and cognitive psychology has served as a foundation for research on topics ranging from moral judgment to the effects of media violence. Considered one of the most influential psychological scientists of all time, Bandura is a recipient of the APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for his achievements in applied psychological research. Watch Inside the Psychologist’s Studio with Albert Bandura and Gian Vittorio Caprara.

It’s human nature to categorize people. When we meet someone for the first time, we make instant judgments about their social status and their personality. Susan Fiske has devoted her career to examining the role of these kinds of judgments in stereotypes and bias. Her research shows that we favor people whom we see as warm and competent, and snub those we view as cold and inept. These perceptions are heavily influenced by race, age, gender, and disability, which can lead to stereotyping and discrimination. With the help of brain imaging, Fiske has found that our social perceptions and prejudices have neural components. But while prejudice may be an inevitable part of the human condition, Fiske’s research shows that it also is surmountable.

Richard McFall’s work has spanned several areas of research including social competence and information processing, psychopathology, and classical conditioning. Throughout his career he has demonstrated a commitment to the use of scientifically valid techniques and treatments. In his Manifesto For A Science of Clinical Psychology he outlined his views on the importance of the integration of science and practice, both in the field, and in the training of the next generation of clinicians. His Manifesto was an instrumental call to action that led to the creation of the Academy of Psychological Clinical Science (APCS) and McFall served as its founding president. His is also the founding executive director of the Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation System (PCSAS), a non-profit body which provides accreditation to PhD programs in psychological clinical science. McFall is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), and a recipient of the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology’s Distinguished Scientist Award.

Everywhere we turn these days, we are confronted with a dizzying array of choices, whether we’re shopping at the supermarket or searching for a first home. Barry Schwartz’s research investigates the decision-making processes that underlie our choices and examines how our choices make us feel. Schwartz’s research has shown that, rather than making us feel better, having more freedom and choice often makes us feel worse. Specifically, the expectation of choice may cause us to question our choices before we make them and can lead us to be disappointed with them afterward. More recently, Schwartz has turned to examine the role of ‘practical wisdom’ – built on personal experience, ethics, and judgment – in decision-making. Throughout his work, Schwartz blends insights from psychological science and economics to understand how we make decisions, how we come to value some things above others, and how we balance our sense of morality with our own self-interest. Schwartz is the author of several best-selling books, including The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less and Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing. Watch Schwartz’s Bring the Family Address at the 24th APS Annual Convention.

Elizabeth Kensinger's research focuses on how emotions affect the way we remember information. She is interested in understanding how the emotional part of information affects the cognitive and neural processes that we use to remember it. Kensinger studies memory in young adults and how memory changes over time. Her research challenges the common understanding that “memory declines with age,” and shows the complex ways in which memory does and does not change as we get older. In 2010, Kensinger was among the inaugural recipients of the APS Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions. Q&A with Elizabeth Kensinger