Social Psychologists Who Spent Time at Both Michigan and Stanford

In my June 5, 2004 entry (June 2004 archives), I presented a list of all known social psychologists (and individuals in related fields) having ties to both the University of Michigan and UCLA (I thank many colleagues for helping augment my list).

I now present the second installment of the series, this time focusing on overlap between Michigan and Stanford. And, as you'll see in the list below, there's a lot of it. Virtually all of the connections with which I've come up are at the graduate-student level and higher (e.g., post-doctoral fellowship, faculty). I'd have to think there are additional people, beyond the few I have, who went to Michigan or Stanford as an undergraduate, then went to the other school in some later capacity. Please let me know of such individuals (or any other people I'm missing at any level).

Here, now, is the list (updated as of February 10, 2006):

Stanford undergraduate-UM graduate student

Geoff Fong

Stanford undergraduate-UM faculty member

Donald Kinder (trained as a social psychologist, on the political science faculty)
Laura Klem (Senior Research Associate, Center for Statistical Consultation and Research)
Lorraine Gutierrez (joint social work/psychology; also attended grad school at Michigan)

UM undergraduate-Stanford post doc

John (Jack) Mayer

UM undergraduate-Stanford faculty member

Barbara Gans Tversky (cognitive psych; also attended grad school at Michigan)

Stanford graduate student-UM faculty member

Angus Campbell
Nancy Cantor (now Chancellor at Syracuse University)
Barbara Fredrickson
Susan Gelman (developmental psych)
Rich Gonzalez
John Hagen (developmental psych)
Barbara Smuts (biopsychology)
Harold Stevenson (developmental psych, emeritus)

UM graduate student-Stanford post doc

Christy Miller Buchanan (developmental psych)
Julie Garcia (post doc upcoming)
Joseph Mikels
Daryl Wout
Elissa Wurf

UM graduate student-Stanford faculty member

Daryl Bem (now at Cornell)
Sandra Bem (now at Cornell)
Jon Krosnick (social psych Ph.D., faculty appointments in communication, political science, and psychology)
Eleanor Maccoby (developmental psych)
Michael Morris (business, now at Columbia University)
Robert Roeser (ed psych, currently W.T. Grant scholar)
Larissa Tiedens (business)
Amos Tversky (deceased)

Faculty at both Stanford and UM

Phoebe Ellsworth (also received Ph.D. from Stanford)
Leon Festinger (deceased)
Hazel Markus (also received Ph.D. from Michigan)
Susan Nolen-Hoeksema (clinical psych, now at Yale)
Edward E. Smith (cognitive science; also received Ph.D. from Michigan)
Claude Steele
Bob Zajonc (also received undergraduate degree and Ph.D. from Michigan)

Miscellaneous

Phil Converse (former director of both UM's Institute for Social Research and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, which, though not officially affiliated with Stanford, is on Stanford property)

I want to thank the following people for their comments and for suggesting individuals for the list, beyond those I had initially put up: David Buss, Barbara Fredrickson, Julie Garcia, Jon Krosnick, Mark Lepper, John (Jack) Mayer, Jennifer Overbeck, Steve Peck, David Sears, and Christian Waugh.

I'll continue doing these Michigan/other school linkages. Please send me your suggestions of schools to link with Michigan!

It was just recently announced that James Jackson will become the new director of the UM's Institute for Social Research (ISR). The news release gives a pretty extensive summary of his career history and achievements, so I won't repeat it.

James was the social psychology area chair when my cohort entered the graduate program in Fall 1984. In that capacity, James presided over our first-year students' introductory seminar, helping socialize us into the program and the field. I always found him very enthusiastic and very helpful.

Congratulations to James!

Mark Blumenthal, who operates the website Mystery Pollster (and who, as noted in my October 18, 2004 entry, did his undergraduate work at UM; click for October 2004 archives) recently reviewed polling data on President Bush's Social Security proposals. In my opinion, Mark's is the webpage of record for explaining the mechanics of polling to a general audience.

In analyzing recent polls on Social Security, Mark invokes the concept of "non-attitudes," coined by Phil Converse. "Non-attitudes" refer to opinions that are spontaneously generated by respondents who want to create the impression they are well-informed. Converse, though best known in political science circles, received his training as a social psychologist.

For nearly the entire time that my cohort and I were in graduate school at Michigan, Converse was the director of the Institute for Social Research, where social psychology faculty and student offices were located at the time. Converse then moved in 1989 to become director of Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a position he held until 1994.

Converse is today listed as a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Michigan.

In at least two of the graduate courses I took at UM -- Hazel Markus's on advanced social psychology and Don Kinder's on public opinion -- we covered Converse's work.