April 2003
Volume 16, Number 4
Michael DeKay is a social psychologist whose research projects involve risk perception, risk ranking, precautionary reasoning, and the distinction between unique and repeated decisions. He received his PhD in social psychology from the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1994. Since 1996, he has held joint appointments in the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management and in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.
Interdisciplinary research and edu-cation are alive and well at Carnegie Mellon University. For almost seven years, I have held a 50/50 appointment between the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management and the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon. Although there aren't many positions like mine at other universities, joint appointments are very common here. Almost all of the EPP faculty are jointly appointed with traditional engineering departments, the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, other departments in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, or the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (Carnegie Mellon's business school). At the Heinz School, joint appointments are less common, but that is partly due to the fact that Heinz does not divide itself into departments. There are no artificial boundaries, for example, between psychologists, economists, operations researchers, and information systems specialists, as there might be elsewhere.
This purposeful elimination of disciplinary boundaries in EPP, Heinz, and elsewhere at Carnegie Mellon has led to a remarkably vibrant community in which interdisciplinary collaboration is the norm. Carnegie Mellon's new Department of Biomedical Engineering, which is based on EPP's joint-appointment model, and burgeoning relationships with RAND's new Pittsburgh office will further enhance this collaborative environment.
An excellent example of interdisciplinary research at Carnegie Mellon is our work on developing and evaluating a deliberative method for ranking risks. This project has involved five faculty members with backgrounds in psychology, decision analysis, engineering, and the physical sciences. Although many public comparative risk projects have been conducted in recent years, the risk categories and attributes have varied widely, the materials and procedures have not been designed to facilitate comparisons among risks on their most important features, and the validity and reproducibility of the resulting rankings have generally not been assessed. With funding from the National Science Foundation and Environmental Protection Agency, we developed and assessed a method for assisting groups of laypeople in ranking risks to health, safety, and the environment, drawing upon the wealth of knowledge about risk perception and communication and on our own research into people's perceptions and evaluations of ecological risks.
Almost all of the important decisions in this project - from categorizing and describing the risks to developing multiple strategies for measuring individuals' and groups' concerns about those risks - have benefited from interactions between the psychologists and the other members of the research team. Although this risk-ranking project has an applied focus, both EPP and Heinz also encourage faculty to engage in basic research. Currently, I have two NSF-funded projects on basic judgment and decision processes: one on precautionary reasoning and one on the distinction between unique and repeated decisions.
The interdisciplinary nature of EPP and Heinz extends to education as well as research. In particular, undergraduate and master's students are required to take two semesters of project courses, and EPP Ph.D. students are required to manage one such course. The project courses I have taught have involved two or more faculty; students from EPP, Heinz, and SDS; review panels composed of experts from outside the university; and usually clients from local or national government agencies. Topics have included brownfield redevelopment, organ transplantation, human tissue engineering, and the transition to a hydrogen-based energy system. Such courses provide students from different academic backgrounds the opportunity to work together on important and challenging problems.
In my experience, being an academic psychologist outside of a traditional psychology department requires a genuine interest in other relevant domains. Indeed, my background in the physical sciences helped me land this position in the college of engineering. (I had degrees in chemistry from Caltech and Cornell before heading back to graduate school to study social psychology at the University of Colorado.) Although my appointment is very unusual for a psychologist, an appreciation of other scientific perspectives seems essential for anyone working at the boundaries of the discipline.
Of course, being jointly appointed outside the psychology department has its drawbacks as well. On the research side, it is somewhat difficult to attract psychologically-minded graduate students to either program, and I have to be careful not to lose track of my own research agenda among the numerous opportunities for collaboration. On the teaching side, courses in my specialty area (judgment and decision making) are covered elsewhere at Carnegie Mellon. As a result, I have developed or adapted four different methodology courses and two courses on more focused topics (environmental and medical decision making). Finally, I do miss having closer connections to colleagues in psychology. Despite my access to an excellent psychology department at Carnegie Mellon (note that Sheldon Cohen will give one of the distinguished lectures at this year's APS convention), my activities in Heinz and EPP have made it difficult to pursue additional interests.
In summary, my current position challenges me in ways that a typical social or cognitive position in a traditional psychology department would not, but the intellectual rewards of working in such a stimulating environment more than compensate for the additional effort that is required. Carnegie Mellon is one of the very best places in the country to research judgment and decision making, and Heinz and EPP both provide excellent avenues for applying this research to important policy matters. With lower barriers to interdisciplinary research at Carnegie Mellon than at any other top-tier university in the nation, it is hard to imagine being anywhere else.
