April 2003
Volume 16, Number 4
Kimihiko Yamagishi earned his doctorate at the department of psychology, University of Washington, in 1995. Since 2000, he is an associate professor at graduate school of decision science and technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology. His Web site is at www.ky.hum.titech.ac.jp/kimihiko-e.html
As a cognitive psycholo-gist by training, my specialty is in judgment and decision-making. Being a decision-making specialist puts me in a funny position for a psychologist, and in effect, I have never been affiliated at a department of psychology since earning my doctorate.
The first professional position I held was in the school of business and environment at Shukutoku University. Now I am at the graduate school of decision science and technology at Tokyo Institute of Technology. The reason I have held jobs at decision science programs may be due to the multidisciplinary nature of decision-making research. When I was finishing my graduate education and was on the job market, I planned to find a position in my home country, Japan. At that time, job openings in Japan for decision-making researchers were more abundant at multidisciplinary programs than at conventional psychology departments. This still holds true today and my colleagues' backgrounds include animal behavior, business studies, economics, linguistics, marketing, mathematics, operational research, sociology, and so on.
Therefore it may be said that I have always been in multidisciplinary environment: Interacting with colleagues from various disciplines adds more fun to being an academic psychology researcher. A drawback of not being in a psychology department - my university does not have a psychology department - is that it is sometimes time-consuming and cumbersome to persuade my colleagues that psychologists have special needs.
My colleagues, for example, do necessarily understand that human participants are crucially important for psychological research on decision-making. Sometimes I am forced to make special arrangements and even a bit of political maneuvering to run experiments with human participants. Yet, I enjoy interacting with people from various disciplines who share common interests in the process of decision-making. This multidisciplinary nature is probably the biggest difference from being affiliated at a psychology program.
