Cross-Cutting Theme Programs

Milliseconds to Decades: Development as a Level of Analysis

Tick-tock, tick-tock — our bodies, thoughts, feelings and behaviors evolve continuously across time. Can trajectories of change say more than a single snapshot about who we are and where we’re going? Find out in this cross-cutting theme program on the value of studying development over time in psychological research. What development happens in the “blink of an eye,” and what can we learn from behavior as it unfolds across the years?

Robert H. Singer, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Emily Butler, University of Arizona
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, University College London, United Kingdom
George A. Bonanno, Teachers College, Columbia University
Ian J. Deary, The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

“Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor”: Psychological Science and Immigration

The United States is a nation of immigrants, so there is special interest in studying the psychological experience of coming to a new country and starting a new life. How do immigrants learn new languages, customs, and values? What factors predict whether immigrants thrive or languish? This cross-cutting theme program examines issues ranging from socialization in immigrant families to the psychology of work in immigrants’ lives.

Hirokazu Yoshikawa, New York University
Belinda Campos, University of California, Irvine
David Rollock, Purdue University
Gilad Chen, University of Maryland, College Park
Carola Suárez-Orozco, University of California, Los Angeles

Law & (Dis)Order: Psychological Science in the Legal System

Societies and organizations establish rules to govern behavior and provide standards for right and wrong. If the rules are so clear, then why do we have such an overburdened legal system? Issues of morality, self-control, persuasion, need to belong, and others abound in determining licit and illicit behavior, thereby highlighting the centrality of psychological science in understanding how individuals become involved in the legal system. In addition, a myriad of psychological factors influence decisions about competency to stand trial, sentencing, and verdicts from juries in courtrooms every day. Speakers in this exciting cross-cutting symposium offer new insights into perennial problems for legal systems that attempt to establish more order than disorder.

Symposium

Gregory (Brad) Bradshaw, Bradshaw Litigation Consulting, LLC
John F. Edens, Texas A&M University
Essi Viding, University College London, United Kingdom
Luke W. Hyde, University of Michigan

Invited Addresses

Saul Kassin, Williams College and John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Maria Hartwig, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

In conjunction with this theme program, The Central Park Five, a film from award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns, will be shown, followed by a discussion with Saul Kassin, Sarah Burns, and a Central Park Five exoneree.