December 2004
Volume 17, Number 12
Five APS Fellows Inducted Into American Academy of Arts and Sciences
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Five APS Fellows were inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on October 9, 2004. APS Past President Marilynn Brewer, Ohio State University; Thomas J. Carew, University of California, Irvine; Dedre Gentner, Northwestern University; Charter Member Mark Lepper, Stanford University; and Norbert Schwarz, University of Michigan, were chosen for the class of 2004.
Prior to coming to Ohio State, Brewer was professor of psychology and director of the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. Brewer's primary research interests include the perception and cognitive representation of individual persons and person "types"; the study of ingroup loyalty, intergroup biases, and the effects of contact between groups on intergroup acceptance; and social identities as related to concepts of the self. Brewer was APS President from 1993-1995, and is currently editor of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review.
Carew is professor of neurobiology and behavior and chair of Irvine's Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. Carew studies the neuronal basis of diverse forms of memory in order to understand the mechanisms by which the nervous system acquires, stores, and retrieves information.
Gentner is professor of psychology and education and director of the Cognitive Science Program at Northwestern. She is interested in learning and thinking; analogy, similarity and metaphor; concepts and conceptual structure; language and cognition; language acquisition; and cross-linguistic studies.
Lepper is professor of psychology at Stanford University. His interests include extrinsic incentives, intrinsic motivation, and education; mechanisms underlying the perseverance of initial beliefs and attitudes; techniques for overcoming unwarranted belief perseverance; children's internalization of adult values; the cognitive processes in self control and moral development; and attitude-behavior consistency.
Schwartz, professor at Michigan's Institute for Social Research department of psychology, researches social cognition, in particular the interplay of feeling and thinking; conversational influences on judgment and reasoning; and applications of social cognition theorizing to methodological issues of social science research.
The 2004 class includes 177 Fellows and 24 Foreign Honorary Members chosen from the fields of scholarship, business, the arts, and public affairs. Founded in 1780 by John Adams and other scholar-patriots, the Academy's mission is "to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people." The Academy has elected as Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington, Ben Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Einstein, and Winston Churchill. Drawing on the wide-ranging expertise of its membership, the Academy conducts thoughtful, innovative, non-partisan studies on international security, American institutions, education, and the humanities.
Koltoko-Rivera Addresses NATO
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Mark E. Koltko-Rivera recently addressed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, regarding ways in which psychology can be used against terrorism. The symposium, held in October 2004 at the Ministry of Defense in London, was organized by NATO's Research and Technology Organization, and addressed the topic of "Systems, Concepts, and Integration Methods and Technologies for Defense Against Terrorism." Koltko-Rivera delivered a paper co-authored with Peter A. Hancock, University of Central Florida, describing ways in which a wide variety of subdisciplines in psychology can be applied for this purpose, including human factors and applied experimental, cognitive, personality, social, counseling, clinical, consumer, environmental design, and positive psychology, as well as psychometrics. In a separate paper, Koltko-Rivera described the conceptual outlines of an artificial intelligence system employing fuzzy signal detection theory that could be employed to detect terrorist preparations.
Koltko-Rivera is director of research at Professional Services Group, Inc., in Winter Park, Florida. He is currently the principal investigator on two research projects for the US Department of Defense.
Jason Elected VP of AACFS
APS Fellow Leonard A. Jason, professor of psychology at DePaul University and director of the DePaul Center for Community Research, was elected vice president of the American Association of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or AACFS. He is the only psychologist on the Board of Directors of AACFS, an international scientific organization that promotes, stimulates, and coordinates the exchange of ideas related to chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia research, patient care, and treatment.