The Faces and Minds of Psychological Science

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.

Scientists often think of the adult brain as being “modular,” containing many systems that each specialize in a given function like language or number, relatively independent of one another; this explains why damage to the mature brain in adults tends to impair certain brain functions while leaving others intact. However, Annette Karmiloff-Smith believed that this modular framework cannot be applied to the developing brain. In her research on infants with genetic developmental disorders like Williams syndrome, Down syndrome and Fragile X syndrome, she found that these disorders are not manifestations of damage to specific brain areas in an otherwise intact typical brain, but rather that early atypical processing impacts on many regions, some more subtly than others, and that interactions across brain regions give rise to different developmental trajectories of brain development.  Karmiloff-Smith believed that a genetic disorder’s cognitive-level symptoms can be traced back to these early neural developmental differences, and that understanding full atypical trajectories is critical for designing treatments. Since it is in infancy that the brain shows maximum plasticity, even a small developmental rerouting could have a large impact later in life. A Past APS Board Member, Karmiloff-Smith passed away in December 2016. Watch A Dynamic Approach to Developmental Disorders Watch Inside the Psychologist’s Studio with Annette Karmiloff-Smith and BJ Casey.

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.

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.

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.

Fanny Cheung's research underscores the importance of cultural context in assessing personality: much of her early work has involved translating, adapting, and refining one of the most widely used personality assessments, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), for the Chinese population. While the MMPI has been found to be generally valid across cultures, there has been a push in some Eastern Asian countries for indigenous assessments, which are designed to incorporate personality constructs that are more culturally relevant to the local people than some of those found in the imported western measures. This idea led Cheung to develop the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI), which combines universal elements of western assessment with indigenous measures specific to Chinese culture. The CPAI has been used in hundreds of studies on Chinese personality structure and cross-cultural comparisons of various dimensions of personality. Some of the indigenous dimensions were found to be relevant also to non-Chinese cultures and the CPAI was renamed Cross-cultural Personality Assessment Inventory. Cheung has also used her expertise in cross-cultural psychology to study gender equality, violence against women, and women leadership in Chinese populations.

On a daily basis, infants and toddlers encounter a plethora of items ranging from animals to appliances their parents use. Despite their limited abilities to process information, even very young children are remarkably capable of learning the names of these objects. Ellen M. Markman conducted some of the pioneering research on the reasoning skills that infants and young children use to figure out the meanings of words. When someone points to an object and labels it, how do children conclude the label refers to the object itself, rather than its color, size, shape, texture, activity, attractiveness, and so on? Markman has postulated that by the time children begin to acquire their vocabulary, they have a set of default assumptions that together enable children to quickly zoom in on some hypotheses and rule out others. Through extensive experimental research, Markman has challenged the traditional theories of word learning and provided new insights into the nature of language acquisition.

Mahzarin Banaji studies how our minds make decisions without awareness, intention, and control. She analyses how one human being judges another and the extent to which social groups (such as nationality, gender, race, physical attributes) enter into choices. She studies both behavior and the brain, she analyzes the minds of both adults and young children, and she conducts her experiments in the traditional laboratory as well as on the web. With two colleagues she hosts an educational and research site (www.implicit.harvard.edu) at which the Implicit Association Test (IAT) is used to teach people about the associations in our minds of which we are unaware. By exposing people to their own unconscious bias, and by speaking publicly about her own biases, Banaji works to increase awareness with the hope of changing minds through psychological science. Watch Inside the Psychologist’s Studio with Mahzarin Banaji and Rebecca Saxe. Watch Banaji's Keynote Address at the 26th APS Annual Convention.

Morton Ann Gernsbacher's research has for 20 years investigated the processes and mechanisms that underlie language processing. She empirically challenged the view that language processing involves language-specific mechanisms by proposing that, instead, it draws on general processes. During the past few years (motivated by personal passion) Gernsbacher's quest has been to answer the fundamental question of why some individuals with autism cant speak. In this pursuit, Gernsbacher has already made a highly significant discovery: Some individuals with autism cant speak because of motor planning challenges. This discovery has begun a paradigmatic shift in revealing the basis of speech impairment in autism. Watch Gernsbacher's Bring the Family Address from the 25th APS Annual Convention.

Giacomo Rizzolatti has a longstanding interest in how the cognitive functions of the brain are connected to movement. When he and his colleagues were studying neurons that control hand and mouth actions in monkeys, they noticed that the neurons would not only activate when the animal picked up a piece of food, but the neurons would also switch on when the monkey saw a person pick up a piece of food. Many researchers believe that these neurons could be important for imitation, language acquisition, and various forms of perception. The development of mirror neurons in humans is what allows us to learn through observation and communication and may play a role in how we understand the actions of others. Rizzolatti’s research on mirror neurons has inspired the development of “mirror treatments” to help stroke victims recover motor function as well as countless other publications that span various disciplines in psychology, neuroscience, and health. Among his many awards are the Golgi Prize for Physiology, George Miller Award of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, the Feltrinelli Prize for Medicine of Accademia dei Lincei, the Herlitzka Prize for Physiology, the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, and the Grawemeyer Award in Psychology.

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.

Daphna Shohamy researches learning, memory and decision making. Specifically, she tries to understand the underlying brain mechanisms of how we learn from experience and how we use what we learn to guide decisions and actions. She adopts an integrative approach that draws broadly on neuroscience to make predictions about cognition.  Her research provides a deeper understanding of the cognitive and neural processes involved for different aspects of behavior. In 2011, Shohamy received a Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science (APS). Q&A with Daphna Shohamy

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.

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.

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.

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.

The work day can often be somewhat predictable and routine, but Christina E. Shalley is attempting to enhance the creativity of employees. Shalleys research focuses on how a variety of social and contextual factors affect individuals and teams creativity. Her research combines psychology and management, using a variety of survey and experimental techniques. Specifically, she is investigating how to make jobs and work environments more conducive for creativity. Shalley has also studied group behavior and found that having a lot of personal ties and a diverse social network makes individuals more creative when they are working with others, increasing the teams overall creativity.

Research has documented that Americans with more money and education have improved health prospects compared to poorer people. Nancy Adler has been a pioneer in investigating how social, psychological, and biological factors associated with socioeconomic status (SES) act together to determine the onset and progression of disease. Adler has investigated why individuals engage in health-damaging behaviors and how their understanding of risk affects their choices. This research has primarily been in reproductive health, examining adolescent decision making regarding contraception, conscious and preconscious motivation for pregnancy, and perceptions of risk of sexually transmitted diseases. She also examines subjective perceptions of one’s own socioeconomic status and how these perceptions relate to health along with objective indicators. Her work has raised the study of health disparities all over the globe to a new level of sophistication. Adler is the recipient of a special 25th anniversary APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for her significant intellectual achievements in applied psychological research and their impact on a critical problem in society at large.

Paul Ekman studies facial expressions and the way they can signal deception and reflect a person’s true underlying emotion. Ekman’s research was the first to show that some types of facial expressions (such as fear, disgust, and anger) are universal among all cultures; and along with Wallace V. Friesen he developed the widely used Facial Action Coding System – a taxonomy of every facial expression. His research on identifying deception and hidden demeanor is used by law enforcement and national security organizations to help identify security threats. Ekman was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people, one of APA’s most influential psychologists of the 20th century, and was the inspiration for the main character, Cal Lightman, on the TV show “Lie to Me.” Ekman has even consulted with the animation studio Pixar to help bring their characters to life. He is the recipient of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) William James Fellow Award for his lifetime of significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology. Watch Inside the Psychologist’s Studio with Paul Ekman and Robert Levenson.

Cognitive neuroscientists study people at two explanatory levels: the brain and behavior. Using psychometric models and brain imaging tools, Rogier Kievit explores how theoretical psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind can be used to understand the links between the brain and behavior. His current research relates brain function and structure (using MRI) and cognition in aging populations using structural equation models and network analysis. With the goal of increasing health in older populations, Kievit’s particular interests are in models that effectively capture how cognitive changes across lifetime relate to brain reorganization, adaptation and compensation.

A half-century ago, psychologists considered the study of love and attraction unworthy of study. But Ellen S. Berscheid helped make the science of love one of the most vibrant areas of inquiry in modern social science. Berscheid and her collaborator Elaine C. Hatfield helped pioneer an empirical approach to understanding different facets of romantic relationships, including physical attraction, relationship satisfaction, sexuality, and emotional intimacy. She has also studied the importance people place on physical attractiveness, not just when searching for romantic partners but also in other interactions. In one classic experiment, she demonstrated the preferential treatment that male subjects showered on women they perceived as sexually appealing. Most recently, Berscheid has examined the influence that physical and social environment has on relationship quality and satisfaction. In 2012, she received the APS William James Fellow Award for her contributions to the basic science of psychology. Watch Berscheid's Award Address with her colleague, Elaine C. Hatfield, at the 24th APS Annual Convention.

We make decisions all the time and often in uncertain circumstances. Elke Webers research focuses on how we judge those choices, the decisions we end up making, and individual and cultural differences in risk-taking. Specifically, her research examines behavioral models of decision making and how to measure and model risk-taking behavior. Her work has tied together psychology and economics, by examining risky financial decision making. Additionally, she studies environmental decision making, for example, how people respond to climate change and ways in which policymakers can present programs to the public to make them most effective.

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.

Using basic neural and computer models, Michael Frank studies how we learn and make decisions. He hopes to shed light on how these pathways lead to more complex cognitive functions, such as working memory and cognitive control. Franks theoretical work has important clinical applications, and may help us understand, for example, how brain disorders such as Parkinsons disease alter cognition. Frank is also analyzing individual differences in cognition, in other words, why we all think in different ways. He uses a variety of techniques, including theoretical modeling, genetic analyses, and electrophysiological studies. In 2010, Frank was among the inaugural recipients of the APS Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions. Q&A with Michael J. Frank

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.

Growing up in poor urban neighborhood, Carl Hart watched crack cocaine ravage the lives of his relatives.  Early in his research career, Hart set out to find a neurological cure for chemical addiction. But as he began studying addicts, he found that there was more at issue than the neurochemical properties of the illicit drugs. In groundbreaking experiments, he offered crack addicts a choice between a dose of the drug or a monetary reward.  When the dose was smaller, addicts often chose the money.  When the monetary reward increased, all the participants opted for financial gain over getting high.  A tenured science professor at Columbia University — and the first African-American to hold that distinction — Hart has leveraged his research to advocate for policy reforms. He argues that law enforcers focus too heavily on prosecuting drug users while ignoring poverty, racism, and other socioeconomic conditions that spur substance abuse and crime.

The nature/nurture interaction is a vibrant and important field of study in behavioral science. Terrie Moffitt has focused her research on how genes and environment can, in certain combinations, spur antisocial and criminal behaviors. Her groundbreaking research, in collaboration with psychological scientist Avshalom Caspi, showed that individuals with a specific genotype are more vulnerable to developing antisocial and violent behavior if they are mistreated during childhood. She’s also linked another genotype to a risk for depression in the wake of stressful life events. Watch Terrie Moffitt's keynote address at the inaugural International Convention of Psychological Science.

Studies on human development have shown that even as infants, we have an approximate sense of numbers and amounts. How does this underlie our ability to perform complex calculations? Stanislas Dehaene explores this question through neuroscience. He has used brain imaging to study how the human mind processes numeracy, as well as language. Through his work he has found brain regions specifically involved in mathematical thinking, including the distinction between subtraction and multiplication. Dehaene has also uncovered the neural activity at the core of conscious awareness and experience. Watch Stanislas Dehaene's keynote address at the inaugural International Convention of Psychological Science.

Every employer wants to know the secret to employee motivation. Since the 1970s, Gary Latham has been investigating methods to boost employee performance. His primary interests lie in motivation, performance management, and training. Latham has also co-developed the theory of and conducted extensive research on goal setting, as well as ways employers can use goals to effectively increase job performance and job satisfaction. His studies have revealed that employees perform better when they are given specific, challenging goals compared to easy goals or no goals at all. Latham compiled the results from his goal setting studies and other research into a book for managers entitled, Becoming the Evidence-Based Manager: Making the Science of Management Work for You. He is the recipient of the 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 at large. Watch Latham’s Award Address at the 23rd APS Annual Convention.

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.

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.

Children in densely populated and under-resourced areas often need inspiring and thoughtful teachers. Margaret Beale Spencer researches how children build resiliency, identity, and self-esteem, and how well-trained teachers can set a solid example for students. Her experiments identified that children as young as three years old learn discriminatory tendencies, but that these tendencies can be reversed with training. Spencer designed a CNN study to test racial bias in children. In addition to other major sources of recognition, she was awarded the 2006 Fletcher Fellowship, which recognized work that furthers the broad social goals of the US Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision. Her vulnerability and resiliency focused human development theorizing guides an ongoing program of research on how effective coping strategies can result in healthy outcomes for adolescents in stressful environments, and how teacher/student interactions can be guided to maximize learning.

How exactly do we learn to speak? Patricia Kuhl has spent her career developing answers to that question. Kuhl is internationally recognized for her research on early language and brain development, and for her studies that show how young children learn. She is co-director, with her husband Andrew Meltzoff, of the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. Kuhl’s lab investigates how infant and adult brains process speech. She has also conducted research on language development in autism. Kuhl is widely known for her theories that account for the developmental change by which infants’ ability to discriminate speech sounds becomes increasingly specific to their native language as they age. This model shows that babies use their computational abilities to “crack” the speech code and that their social skills play an important role in learning. Her research has played a major role in identifying critical periods in development. Kuhl is a recipient of a 25th anniversary APS William James Fellow Award  for her significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology. Read more about Kuhl’s research here.

Unconscious biases toward African Americans still produce major inequities in the criminal justice system. Using statistical analyses, Jennifer Eberhardt has documented how racially coded features, such as a defendant’s skin color and hair texture, influence jurors’ decisions and the sentences that judges hand down. For example, she’s shown that jurors are more likely to recommend the death penalty for defendants whose features are stereotypically “black.” And she’s demonstrated that police officers are more likely to mistakenly identify black faces as criminal compared to white faces. In 2014, Eberhardt’s worked earned her the prestigious “genius” fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation.

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

Ed Diener has focused his career on uncovering the essential ingredients to subjective well-being, a term that includes positive feelings and life satisfaction. Nicknamed “Dr. Happiness,” Diener developed the Satisfaction with Life Scale and other measures of psychological well-being. In one noteworthy study, conducted with Martin E.P. Seligman, he found that students with the highest levels of happiness and fewest signs of depression had strong ties to friends and family. Another important finding is that there are some universals in what predicts happiness around the globe, such as trust and respect, but there are also some culture-specific causes as well. For example, self-esteem is more predictive of subjective well-being in individualistic cultures, and religiosity is more predictive of life satisfaction in highly religious societies. According to Diener’s research, even the majority of disadvantaged people, including those with disabilities, report greater-than-neutral levels of happiness. A new direction in Diener’s research is examining the outcomes of subjective well-being, and he has found that in general it leads to better health and social relationships, to greater work productivity, and to better citizenship. His empirical examination of happiness has contributed enormously to the understanding of human well-being. Diener is the recipient of a 25th anniversary APS William James Fellow Award for his significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology. Read more about Diener’s research here.

Ask 10 people how a certain food tastes and most likely, you will get 10 different answers. The science of taste is the focus of Linda Bartoshuk's research, including how individuals vary in their genetic ability to taste. In addition to conducting basic taste research, Bartoshuk works with patient populations, studying taste and oral pain disorders. Bartoshuk's lab discovered supertasters, individuals who perceive very intense tastes (they have more taste buds than most people). Due to their strong taste experiences, supertasters tend to avoid a number of foods (e.g., bitter vegetables); this can affect health risks. Recently, she has been interested in accurately comparing the intensities of sensory and pleasurable experiences across individuals/groups, via magnitude-matching experiments. Conventional methods often lead to incorrect comparisons that can have serious clinical consequences (e.g., failures to see important differences in pain intensities between women and men). Bartoshuk is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and a a recipient of a special 25th anniversary APS William James Fellow Award for her significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology.. She is currently in the University of Florida (Gainesville) College of Dentistry. Watch Inside The Psychologist’s Studio with Linda Bartoshuk.

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.

Peter Ayton studies our judgment and decision making processes, especially where those processes often go wrong. He has investigated judgment errors like the hot-hand fallacy, in which people tend to expect that recent positive successes within a random sequence will continue—like a basketball player on a “hot” shooting streak—and the related gambler’s fallacy, in which people expect that such a positive or negative streak will eventually be balanced out. Ayton has also examined the ways in which these fallacies can harm us, such as the increase in bicyclist deaths in the aftermath of the 2005 London underground bombing, as fear caused many people to abandon the subway in favor of cycling—statistically a much more dangerous mode of transportation. His research has helped bring to light our judgment errors in all aspects of modern life, including sports, health, and computing.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

In her research on early cognitive development, Judy Deloache examines how young children come to understand the various types of symbolic representations around them. Her research on infants and young childrens understandings of pictures, models, and replica objects shows that they have difficulty understanding the relation between a symbolic object and what it stands for. Failing to achieve what she refers to as dual representation, infants and toddlers often treat symbolic objects as if they were real, trying, for example, to lift a picture of an object off the page on which it appears. She recently documented a new phenomenon called scale errors, in which young children treat a miniature object as though it were its much larger counterpart, trying, for example, to sit in a tiny chair or get into a miniature car. DeLoache is a recipient of a special 25th anniversary APS William James Fellow Award for her significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology.

Douglas Medin has explored scientific reasoning in children and adults across cultures, as well as across urban versus rural populations. His research also has focused on what is known as commons behavior. This line of inquiry asks why certain populations do or don’t destroy a shared environment to fulfill selfish needs. His research teams have studied indigenous Mayan populations and found that they share natural resources without draining them, largely because they develop a rich, spiritual understanding of forest ecology. Medin’s work has helped move psychological science beyond laboratory models to a broader focus on how our cultural background influences our view of the world.

Tania Singer is recognized as a world expert on empathy and compassion, and takes an interdisciplinary approach to study social and moral emotions such as fairness, envy, compassion, and revenge.  In addition to brain imaging, her research methods include also game theoretical and psychological tasks, virtual reality environments and measuring biological markers such as the stress hormone cortisol.  In a landmark 2004 study, she discovered that some of the same brain regions that are active when we feel pain also react to the knowledge that a loved one is being hurt.  Those findings provided evidence that empathy on some level is an automatic, physiological response. Singer draws a distinction between empathy and compassion, defining the former as feeling someone else’s emotional state and the latter as warm feeling of cocern rooted in the desire to improve  the wellbeing of another. She has looked at the negative effects of empathy, positing that too much empathetic suffering can lead to empathic disstress, depression and even burnout. She is testing training methods aimed at helping people to shift their emotional reactions from empathy toward compassion and is now conducting a unique large-scale one-year longitudinal compassion training study, the ReSource project, to investigate the differential effects of different mental training techniques on plasticity of the social brain and behavior. She also edited a free downloadable multi-media E-book on Compassion (www.compassion-training.org).

John T. Cacioppo's research looks at the connections between the social and neural mechanisms underlying human behavior. He investigates how societal influences and personal relationships affect cognition and emotions. As a social species, humans have created a network of connections- ranging from families to international alliances- that serve both social and biological needs. Cacioppo's research is focused on understanding the neural, hormonal and genetic mechanisms that motivate humans to interact and their effects on the mind, behavior, and health – an approach known as social neuroscience. Cacioppo's current research focuses on the adverse effects of social isolation and loneliness on our well-being.

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.

Eating behavior is increasingly relevant in a world where many people are overweight or obese. Janet Polivy developed an interest in behaviors associated with dieting and eating in grad school when she showed that dieters will overeat if they think they have broken their diets, regardless of whether or not they ate a high-calorie food. Polivy has also studied “False Hope Syndrome,” a mindset that people develop when they have unrealistic ideas of how quickly and easily they can change themselves. She has investigated the impact these ideas have on behavior and self-image in people who are attempting to make changes in their lives. Currently, Polivy is researching social influences on eating, food cues, and the effects of calorie labeling on the foods people choose and how much they eat.

In the search for new ways to prevent and treat mental illnesses, scientists are refining their understanding of the interplay between environmental factors and brain development in these disorders. Elaine F. Walker has been instrumental in propelling this area of research forward. In one of her most well-known studies, she retrospectively examined childhood home movies of adult-onset schizophrenia patients and their healthy siblings using quantifiable behavioral observations. This approach was groundbreaking in examining real-time predictions of schizophrenia across the early developmental trajectory. Most recently, Walker and her colleagues have been studying a developmental period called the “prodrome,” or the period of months or years that lead up to the onset of a clinical psychiatric disorder. Their aim is to enhance understanding of the neural mechanisms that trigger psychosis. Walker’s research carries important implications for public health and development of novel preventive interventions. Watch Walker’s Award Address at the 25th APS Annual Convention.