Every April during the 25 years from 1973-1997, something everyone in the UM social psychology community could look forward to was the annual Katz-Newcomb Lecture. Named in honor of the eminent social psychologists Daniel Katz (1903-1998) and Theodore Newcomb (1903-1984), the lecture always brought a distinguished figure to Ann Arbor. Social psychology is of course a subdiscipline in both psychology and sociology, and the organizing of the event and discipline of the speakers appear to have been divided relatively equally over the years between psychology and sociology.
(Just as a side note, this website has concentrated on social psychology in UM's psychology department, as that's where I received my training. To get a feel for sociological social psychology, interested readers may wish to look at the journal Social Psychology Quarterly, which is published by the American Sociological Association, or at a 1977 article by UM sociologist James House entitled "The three faces of social psychology," Sociometry, volume 40, pp. 161-177.)
UM's Bentley Historical Library has received the papers of both Katz and Newcomb, and in conjunction, has prepared elaborate biographical sketches of each (Katz, Newcomb). In the interest of space, I'll leave it to people to read these biographies and see all that Katz and Newcomb accomplished. As you read along, you'll be reminded of social psychological classics, such as Katz and Braley's landmark research on stereotypes and Newcomb's study of political attitudes at Bennington College. (In the biographies, you'll notice some fairly large gaps of white space between paragraphs; the documents do not necessarily end at such gaps, so be sure to read to the very bottom!) Another reading I would recommend is the following book, with a posthumous authorship by Newcomb:
Alwin, D.F., Cohen, R.L., and Newcomb, T.M. (1991). Political attitudes over the life span: The Bennington women after fifty years. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
During my years in the graduate program (1984-85 to 1988-89) at least, the Katz-Newcomb was always more than just a lecture. The main talk would take place on a Friday late afternoon. Afterwards, there would usually be a party or a large group of people would go out to dinner. No questions would be taken after the speaker's lecture. Rather, one would have to attend a Saturday morning brunch/seminar to be able to participate in discussion with the speaker. Thus, the Katz-Newcomb filled up a major part of a weekend.
To varying degrees, alumni of the two (psychology and sociology) programs would come back to attend the Katz-Newcomb. The only one I came back for was the 1997 edition, the 25th in the series. By that time (as best I could tell), I was the only out-of-town alumnus in attendance. (I try to get back to Ann Arbor once every year or two, but usually in the summer.)
As already alluded to, after existing as an annual lecture for 25 years (1973-1997), the Katz-Newcomb Lecture now is more of an ad hoc event. Here is one web link to a more recent instantiation of the Katz-Newcomb.
To cap off this retrospective on the Katz-Newcomb, I have attempted to include as comprehensive a list of speakers as possible for the years 1973-1997 (below). Based on my own memories, information I've been able to locate on the web, and the helpful recollections of participants in the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) electronic discussion group (listed by name at the bottom), I've constructed a partial list of Katz-Newcomb lecturers. Clearly, some additional work is needed to finish the list, but I wanted to get this entry up in a timely fashion. I will continue to refine the list. Any information that would help fill in the gaps or correct any errors would be greatly appreciated.
[Update, August 5, 2004: While going through some piles in my office, I just found a complete list of Katz-Newcomb lecturers -- and titles -- covering 1973-1992. I have updated the list below, accordingly. The document I found is probably an enclosure with the invitation I -- and probably all program alumni -- received for the 1993 talk.]
1973 Ivan Steiner, Whatever happened to the group in social psychology?
1974 Henri Tajfel, When do we want to be different? And from social mobility to social movements.
1975 Harold Kelley, Action and perception: An attribution analysis of social interaction.
1976 Herbert Simon, Why cognitive psychology is social psychology, and vice versa.
1977 Erving Goffman, The lecture.
1978 Dorwin Cartwright, Contemporary social psychology in historical perspective.
1979 Amos Tversky, On the psychology of possible worlds, and Daniel Kahneman, Decision-making: Rationality and psychophysics.
1980 Roger Brown, Natural categories and basic objects in the domain of persons.
1981 Phil Converse, Generalization and the social psychology of "other worlds."
1982 Shelley Taylor, The cognitive management of life-threatening illness: Dynamics of psychological homeostasis.
1983 Jerome Bruner, The pragmatics of language and the language of pragmatics.
1984 Judith Rodin, The era of the women's revolution: Why have weight obsessions escalated?
1985 Ralph Turner, Self in society: Who am I really?
1986 Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Dilemmas and paradoxes in organizational change.
1987 David Sears, Group interest: A symbolic politics perspective.
1988 Edward E. (Ned) Jones, Attributional anomalies during social interaction: Some consequences of perceiving while acting.
1989 William Gamson, Media discourse and political thinking.
1990 Walter Mischel, Searching for personality: Toward a conditional analysis of dispositions.
1991 Kristin Luker, The social construction of human crises: The case of teenage pregnancy.
1992 Bob Zajonc, Cognition, communication and consciousness.
1993 Karl E. Weick
1994 Jane Allyn Piliavin
1995 Susan T. Fiske
1996 Lawrence Bobo
1997 Herb Kelman
I would like to thank the following people for offering their recollections: Chris Crandall, Phoebe Ellsworth, Donelson Forsyth, Markus Kemmelmeier, Arthur Miller, Chuck Miller, Kerth O'Brien, Howard Schuman, and Elissa Wurf.
An Unofficial Page by Alan Reifman, Ph.D. '89
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Just a relatively brief entry this week. One of my aims in creating this website is to inspire alumni of other social psychology graduate programs to create retrospective websites on their programs. It seemed likely that there would already be other historical sites on the web devoted to various psychology departments and/or programs therein. Up to this point, however, I had not really done much searching in this area.
As often seems to happen, it's when searching for something else totally unrelated that one finds an item of interest. That's how I recently came across the Historical Archives of the Department of Psychology at Florida State University.
These archives include a large number of different write-ups, focusing on the different eras, programs, department chairs, other prominent people, and even the buildings that have housed the department. Among the essays is a history of social psychology at FSU, written by Jack Brigham.
To follow up on this discovery, I went to the Google search engine and typed the following in the seach field: "history" "psychology department". Over 77,000 hits came up. In looking at the first few screens of hits, however, it seemed that in most cases, when a given department provided a history, it consisted of a single, relatively brief page on the entire department, unlike Florida State's approach of providing essays on multiple facets of its department.
I'm sure there are other psychology departments and/or social psychology programs out there that have extensive historical websites. If anyone knows of any, please e-mail the links to me (via my faculty webpage, which is among the links in the upper right portion of this page).
As often seems to happen, it's when searching for something else totally unrelated that one finds an item of interest. That's how I recently came across the Historical Archives of the Department of Psychology at Florida State University.
These archives include a large number of different write-ups, focusing on the different eras, programs, department chairs, other prominent people, and even the buildings that have housed the department. Among the essays is a history of social psychology at FSU, written by Jack Brigham.
To follow up on this discovery, I went to the Google search engine and typed the following in the seach field: "history" "psychology department". Over 77,000 hits came up. In looking at the first few screens of hits, however, it seemed that in most cases, when a given department provided a history, it consisted of a single, relatively brief page on the entire department, unlike Florida State's approach of providing essays on multiple facets of its department.
I'm sure there are other psychology departments and/or social psychology programs out there that have extensive historical websites. If anyone knows of any, please e-mail the links to me (via my faculty webpage, which is among the links in the upper right portion of this page).
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
This semester, I am teaching a graduate course on structural equation modeling (SEM), an advanced statistical application. This is my third time teaching the course at Texas Tech University and my fourth time overall, as I taught it in 1996 at the University at Buffalo (State University of New York), while I was a researcher at the Research Institute on Addictions.
In developing my lectures, I draw heavily from notes I took myself while taking SEM at Michigan in the Winter 1988 semester from Frank Andrews and Laura Klem. I also took multivariate analysis from Frank and Laura in Fall 1985. I save a lot of stuff, so I have syllabi, notebooks, an extensive set of handouts, and my graded assignments from these two courses.
The classes met twice a week. The way Frank and Laura co-taught their courses was that Frank would lecture one day on the substantive aspects of the relevant statistical technique, and then Laura would teach us how to implement the technique on the computer.
Frank was the clearest, most enthusiastic lecturer one would ever want to hear. In addition to the lecture itself, Frank would hand out extensive bibliographies on the topic, as well as sheets with examples of the technique that had been worked out.
I can't help but think that teaching computer applications of statistical programs must have been so much harder and more time-consuming in the 80s than is currently the case. Back then, data sets were stored on magnetic tape and implementing the commands just to access the data you wanted to work on was a not insubstantial task. Further, we would have to hand type our statistical commands, which usually were quite cryptic. In more recent years, students, faculty members, and other data analysts have had access to much more user-friendly programs that give you an actual spread sheet of your data right on your screen and allow you to select commands from menus. Also, data sets can be transmitted via the Internet and stored/carried on disk.
Despite the seemingly more cumbersome nature of computer data analyses 15-20 years ago compared to now, Laura managed to pull it off. Further, she would use her encyclopedic knowledge of the statistical/data analytic literature in grading our papers. On one paper I just pulled out, for example, she directed me to "See Kenny page 143..."
Frank Andrews died in 1992. To honor Frank, the UM's Survey Research Center created a fellowship to help people attend the Summer Institute. A brief summary of Frank's career is available at this link.
Laura Klem is still around at UM, as seen in this webpage, as a Senior Research Associate with the Center for Statistical Consultation and Research. In fact, she will be teaching a short course on applied structural equation modeling this upcoming May 17 - 20, 2004.
The aforementioned course announcement website notes that, "Enrollees will receive substantial handouts." I couldn't imagine it any other way!
In developing my lectures, I draw heavily from notes I took myself while taking SEM at Michigan in the Winter 1988 semester from Frank Andrews and Laura Klem. I also took multivariate analysis from Frank and Laura in Fall 1985. I save a lot of stuff, so I have syllabi, notebooks, an extensive set of handouts, and my graded assignments from these two courses.
The classes met twice a week. The way Frank and Laura co-taught their courses was that Frank would lecture one day on the substantive aspects of the relevant statistical technique, and then Laura would teach us how to implement the technique on the computer.
Frank was the clearest, most enthusiastic lecturer one would ever want to hear. In addition to the lecture itself, Frank would hand out extensive bibliographies on the topic, as well as sheets with examples of the technique that had been worked out.
I can't help but think that teaching computer applications of statistical programs must have been so much harder and more time-consuming in the 80s than is currently the case. Back then, data sets were stored on magnetic tape and implementing the commands just to access the data you wanted to work on was a not insubstantial task. Further, we would have to hand type our statistical commands, which usually were quite cryptic. In more recent years, students, faculty members, and other data analysts have had access to much more user-friendly programs that give you an actual spread sheet of your data right on your screen and allow you to select commands from menus. Also, data sets can be transmitted via the Internet and stored/carried on disk.
Despite the seemingly more cumbersome nature of computer data analyses 15-20 years ago compared to now, Laura managed to pull it off. Further, she would use her encyclopedic knowledge of the statistical/data analytic literature in grading our papers. On one paper I just pulled out, for example, she directed me to "See Kenny page 143..."
Frank Andrews died in 1992. To honor Frank, the UM's Survey Research Center created a fellowship to help people attend the Summer Institute. A brief summary of Frank's career is available at this link.
Laura Klem is still around at UM, as seen in this webpage, as a Senior Research Associate with the Center for Statistical Consultation and Research. In fact, she will be teaching a short course on applied structural equation modeling this upcoming May 17 - 20, 2004.
The aforementioned course announcement website notes that, "Enrollees will receive substantial handouts." I couldn't imagine it any other way!
Friday, April 02, 2004
Michigan's men's basketball team last night won the championship of the National Invitation Tournament (NIT), essentially a consolation bracket for teams that did not get into the more prestigious National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament.
In doing so, the Wolverines repeated their NIT championship of 20 years earlier. Some of you may be wondering what is the significance of this to Michigan social psychology. The answer is that on the very evening the Wolverines defeated Notre Dame to win the 1984 NIT title, I had just arrived in Ann Arbor to visit UM as a potential graduate school. I thus watched the game on television from an Ann Arbor hotel room.
Accompanied by my mother and brother, I used my spring break from UCLA to visit four midwestern (Big Ten) universities to help me decide where to pursue graduate studies in social psychology. Although I grew up in L.A., my family has strong midwestern roots, as my mother's side of the family is from Chicago (I was actually born in the Windy City, but didn't live there very long). All the schools I visited had strong social psychology programs, and these just seemed like they'd be interesting places to go to school.
The first school I visited was Northwestern. One of the faculty there at the time, whom I met, was Geoff Fong, a recent Michigan social psych Ph. D. (a link to Geoff's current facullty webpage at the University of Waterloo is included in one of my earlier postings).
Next, we went to Indiana University in Bloomington. One of the faculty members I met there was Jim Sherman, who is still at IU. Jim is also a Michigan Ph.D. (1967). I was beginning to see a trend. I figured that if Michigan Ph.D. recipients were getting faculty positions at these nice universities, UM might be the best place to go. (I had also visited one school on the West Coast, UC Santa Barbara, and one of the professors I met there, Chuck McClintock, was also a Michigan Ph.D.)
Michigan was third on the itinerary, and we ended the trip at Ohio State. I liked all four schools I visited on the midwestern tour, but then and now Michigan seemed to be the best choice for me.
I still run into Geoff Fong and Jim Sherman at various conferences. Jim and I have really renewed our acquaintance in recent years, as he co-organized an informal sports statistics/decision-making conference in 2003 in Scottsdale, Arizona, timed to coincide with spring-training, naturally. I was fortunate enough to be invited, based presumably on the attention my hot hand website (which involves statistical analyses of sports streaks) had gotten.
For whatever reason, even growing up on the West Coast, I've had a fascination with the Big Ten for as long as I can remember (perhaps because the Pacific Ten and Big Ten winners always met in the Rose Bowl). Those of you who want to get more of a flavor for the towns, campuses, and traditions of the Big Ten (pre-Penn State) would probably enjoy the 1989 book Big Ten Country by Bob Wood (available pretty cheaply over the Internet).
In doing so, the Wolverines repeated their NIT championship of 20 years earlier. Some of you may be wondering what is the significance of this to Michigan social psychology. The answer is that on the very evening the Wolverines defeated Notre Dame to win the 1984 NIT title, I had just arrived in Ann Arbor to visit UM as a potential graduate school. I thus watched the game on television from an Ann Arbor hotel room.
Accompanied by my mother and brother, I used my spring break from UCLA to visit four midwestern (Big Ten) universities to help me decide where to pursue graduate studies in social psychology. Although I grew up in L.A., my family has strong midwestern roots, as my mother's side of the family is from Chicago (I was actually born in the Windy City, but didn't live there very long). All the schools I visited had strong social psychology programs, and these just seemed like they'd be interesting places to go to school.
The first school I visited was Northwestern. One of the faculty there at the time, whom I met, was Geoff Fong, a recent Michigan social psych Ph. D. (a link to Geoff's current facullty webpage at the University of Waterloo is included in one of my earlier postings).
Next, we went to Indiana University in Bloomington. One of the faculty members I met there was Jim Sherman, who is still at IU. Jim is also a Michigan Ph.D. (1967). I was beginning to see a trend. I figured that if Michigan Ph.D. recipients were getting faculty positions at these nice universities, UM might be the best place to go. (I had also visited one school on the West Coast, UC Santa Barbara, and one of the professors I met there, Chuck McClintock, was also a Michigan Ph.D.)
Michigan was third on the itinerary, and we ended the trip at Ohio State. I liked all four schools I visited on the midwestern tour, but then and now Michigan seemed to be the best choice for me.
I still run into Geoff Fong and Jim Sherman at various conferences. Jim and I have really renewed our acquaintance in recent years, as he co-organized an informal sports statistics/decision-making conference in 2003 in Scottsdale, Arizona, timed to coincide with spring-training, naturally. I was fortunate enough to be invited, based presumably on the attention my hot hand website (which involves statistical analyses of sports streaks) had gotten.
For whatever reason, even growing up on the West Coast, I've had a fascination with the Big Ten for as long as I can remember (perhaps because the Pacific Ten and Big Ten winners always met in the Rose Bowl). Those of you who want to get more of a flavor for the towns, campuses, and traditions of the Big Ten (pre-Penn State) would probably enjoy the 1989 book Big Ten Country by Bob Wood (available pretty cheaply over the Internet).
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
The March 2004 Ann Arbor Observer magazine had an interesting story on what had become of the town's music/record/CD stores over the last four decades. I used to pick up the Observer regularly when I lived in Ann Arbor and then when I moved away in 1989, I signed up for a subscription that I've maintained to this day.
According to the article, Ann Arbor was at one time "the Midwest's mecca for recorded music buyers."
Apparently referring to various points in the span of time from the 1960s through the 1990s, the article notes:
"On Liberty Street there were the Liberty Music Shop, Borders Books and Music, Schoolkids' Records, and SKR Classical. Around the corner on State Street were Discount Records and Harmony House. Across campus on South University, there was Tower Records. At their peak, those seven stores alone took up almost 40,000 square feet of prime retail space and took in approximately $15 million annually."
Now, however:
"For the past couple of years, Borders has been the only store of the original seven still standing, and its music department is a joke among collectors..."
Schoolkids has survived also, but in a different location (below Bivouac on State Street) and with a new name, Schoolkids in Exile.
The article also notes that two venerable used-record stores, Wazoo and PJ's, have remained. (I remember meeting PJ.) There's also another used-record store called Encore Recordings.
Why the huge decline? As the article notes, the combination of online purchasing of CDs and downloading of music cut into the stores' business.
I bought a decent amount of music (cassette tapes) during my UM years, but was never a huge purchaser. My reaction to the changing nature of the recorded music industry would be as follows. Ann Arbor is a great walking town and being able to engage in window-shopping or actual shopping is part of the atmosphere. To the extent that music stores seem to be disappearing from this scene, then a portion of the town's history and social fabric will have been lost.
According to the article, Ann Arbor was at one time "the Midwest's mecca for recorded music buyers."
Apparently referring to various points in the span of time from the 1960s through the 1990s, the article notes:
"On Liberty Street there were the Liberty Music Shop, Borders Books and Music, Schoolkids' Records, and SKR Classical. Around the corner on State Street were Discount Records and Harmony House. Across campus on South University, there was Tower Records. At their peak, those seven stores alone took up almost 40,000 square feet of prime retail space and took in approximately $15 million annually."
Now, however:
"For the past couple of years, Borders has been the only store of the original seven still standing, and its music department is a joke among collectors..."
Schoolkids has survived also, but in a different location (below Bivouac on State Street) and with a new name, Schoolkids in Exile.
The article also notes that two venerable used-record stores, Wazoo and PJ's, have remained. (I remember meeting PJ.) There's also another used-record store called Encore Recordings.
Why the huge decline? As the article notes, the combination of online purchasing of CDs and downloading of music cut into the stores' business.
I bought a decent amount of music (cassette tapes) during my UM years, but was never a huge purchaser. My reaction to the changing nature of the recorded music industry would be as follows. Ann Arbor is a great walking town and being able to engage in window-shopping or actual shopping is part of the atmosphere. To the extent that music stores seem to be disappearing from this scene, then a portion of the town's history and social fabric will have been lost.
Monday, March 15, 2004
Visiting with Michigan-Linked Developmental Psych Folks at Society for Research on Adolescence Conference
Just got back from the Society for Research on Adolescence conference in Baltimore. I added another Pizzeria Uno to my national dining list (see earlier posting on my favorite Ann Arbor restaurants) and also took the tour at the Baltimore Orioles' baseball park at Camden Yards.
As I've alluded to previously in connection with the overlap between the social and personality psychology programs at Michigan and the joint psychology-social work programs, boundaries between intellectually kindred programs tend to be very permeable. This is also the case, to some extent, for the social and developmental psychology programs, with extensive research in social development.
I personally was a late comer to the social-developmental intersection, in fact not until my postdoctoral work at the Research Institute on Addictions in Buffalo from 1991-1997. It was there that I applied my social psychology training to the study of adolescent and young-adult drinking and really began incorporating literatures in adolescent development and family studies into my research. The first SRA conference I attended was in 1996, and this research track propelled me to a faculty position in Human Development and Family Studies at Texas Tech University.
Back when I was in grad school at Michigan from 1984-1989, I related to the developmental psychology students pretty much exclusively on a social/collegial basis. Now when we see each other, we talk about common research interests.
Jacque (pronounced Jackie) Eccles, who has spent most of her 30-year faculty career at Michigan, continues to lead an extensive program of studies involving numerous graduate students and postdocs under the rubric of the Gender & Achievement Research Program (GARP). Not only that, but Jacque served this past biennium as the President of SRA.
I ran into several current and former GARP researchers at the conference. The first person I always look for at SRA is Bonnie Barber, with whom I was friends not only during graduate school at Michigan, but also as undergraduates at UCLA (the Michigan-UCLA connection, of which Jacque Eccles is also a part, is a topic on which I plan to do a future entry). Bonnie has been at the University of Arizona for the last several years, and also remains an "affiliate" to GARP according to the aformentioned GARP web link. I also saw Jan Jacobs, now a Vice-Provost at Penn State and also a GARP affiliate.
Other GARP researchers and affiliates I saw (including some I met for the first time) included Oksana Malanchuk (who overlapped with me in the social psych grad program), Katie Jodl, Steve Peck, Robert Roeser, Mina Vida (web links for these individuals are available at the GARP site), and Pamela Frome.
I also had a chance to visit briefly with Christy Miller Buchanan, who was in the same course with me on socialization at UM (taught by Joe Veroff and Libby Douvan). Among Christy's numerous publications, she authored the following major one with Jacque Eccles that I use as lecture material in my Problems of Adolescence course at Texas Tech:
Buchanan, C. M., Eccles, J. S., & Becker, J. B. (1992). Are adolescents the victims of raging hormones?: Evidence for activational effects of hormones on moods and behavior at adolescence. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 62-107.
Another contemporary of mine from grad school days I saw was Liz Mazur. We entered the same year, so presumably took first-year proseminar and stats together.
Also, I saw two leading researchers who study longitudinal change in adolescent problem behaviors, Wayne Osgood (another UCLA-Michigan person), who was a Research Scientist in the UM's Institute for Social Research on Marty Gold's delinquency project in the 1980s and is now at Penn State, and John Schulenberg, who since 1991 has been with UM's Monitoring the Future study of high school drug use.
Lastly, to close out this maize-and-blue weekend, I met an interesting person sitting in the very next seat to me on the flight from Baltimore to Dallas-Ft. Worth (a leading connecting hub). He looked to be reading some academic-type papers, so I asked him if he indeed was an academic. The gentleman, named James Adams, turned out to be a political science professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Michigan Ph.D. at that! He noted that he had taken a group behavior class from social psychologist Gene Burnstein while at UM.
As I've alluded to previously in connection with the overlap between the social and personality psychology programs at Michigan and the joint psychology-social work programs, boundaries between intellectually kindred programs tend to be very permeable. This is also the case, to some extent, for the social and developmental psychology programs, with extensive research in social development.
I personally was a late comer to the social-developmental intersection, in fact not until my postdoctoral work at the Research Institute on Addictions in Buffalo from 1991-1997. It was there that I applied my social psychology training to the study of adolescent and young-adult drinking and really began incorporating literatures in adolescent development and family studies into my research. The first SRA conference I attended was in 1996, and this research track propelled me to a faculty position in Human Development and Family Studies at Texas Tech University.
Back when I was in grad school at Michigan from 1984-1989, I related to the developmental psychology students pretty much exclusively on a social/collegial basis. Now when we see each other, we talk about common research interests.
Jacque (pronounced Jackie) Eccles, who has spent most of her 30-year faculty career at Michigan, continues to lead an extensive program of studies involving numerous graduate students and postdocs under the rubric of the Gender & Achievement Research Program (GARP). Not only that, but Jacque served this past biennium as the President of SRA.
I ran into several current and former GARP researchers at the conference. The first person I always look for at SRA is Bonnie Barber, with whom I was friends not only during graduate school at Michigan, but also as undergraduates at UCLA (the Michigan-UCLA connection, of which Jacque Eccles is also a part, is a topic on which I plan to do a future entry). Bonnie has been at the University of Arizona for the last several years, and also remains an "affiliate" to GARP according to the aformentioned GARP web link. I also saw Jan Jacobs, now a Vice-Provost at Penn State and also a GARP affiliate.
Other GARP researchers and affiliates I saw (including some I met for the first time) included Oksana Malanchuk (who overlapped with me in the social psych grad program), Katie Jodl, Steve Peck, Robert Roeser, Mina Vida (web links for these individuals are available at the GARP site), and Pamela Frome.
I also had a chance to visit briefly with Christy Miller Buchanan, who was in the same course with me on socialization at UM (taught by Joe Veroff and Libby Douvan). Among Christy's numerous publications, she authored the following major one with Jacque Eccles that I use as lecture material in my Problems of Adolescence course at Texas Tech:
Buchanan, C. M., Eccles, J. S., & Becker, J. B. (1992). Are adolescents the victims of raging hormones?: Evidence for activational effects of hormones on moods and behavior at adolescence. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 62-107.
Another contemporary of mine from grad school days I saw was Liz Mazur. We entered the same year, so presumably took first-year proseminar and stats together.
Also, I saw two leading researchers who study longitudinal change in adolescent problem behaviors, Wayne Osgood (another UCLA-Michigan person), who was a Research Scientist in the UM's Institute for Social Research on Marty Gold's delinquency project in the 1980s and is now at Penn State, and John Schulenberg, who since 1991 has been with UM's Monitoring the Future study of high school drug use.
Lastly, to close out this maize-and-blue weekend, I met an interesting person sitting in the very next seat to me on the flight from Baltimore to Dallas-Ft. Worth (a leading connecting hub). He looked to be reading some academic-type papers, so I asked him if he indeed was an academic. The gentleman, named James Adams, turned out to be a political science professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Michigan Ph.D. at that! He noted that he had taken a group behavior class from social psychologist Gene Burnstein while at UM.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
"Michigan Thursday" Clothing Tradition
Today's Thursday, so I thought I'd tell everyone about the "Michigan Thursday" tradition I started shortly after arriving as a faculty member at Texas Tech University in the fall of 1997.
As early as my Texas Tech job interview in February of '97, I was told by some of the faculty members in the department (Human Development and Family Studies) that faculty and staff members throughout the campus were requested to wear the school colors of red and black on Fridays. As someone who has always had a lot of school spirit, I have adhered to the "Red and Black Fridays" dress code at probably a 99.99% rate during my seven years (thus far) at Texas Tech. Not only that; I sometimes nag new faculty members about wearing red and black on Fridays (in a friendly kind of way).
I don't know why, but early on it somehow occurred to me that I could start my own tradition of wearing maize and blue University of Michigan clothing on Thursdays, hence "Michigan Thursday." Probably the most fun aspect of Michigan Thursday is the reaction of students in my undergraduate classes, whom I inform about my tradition right at the beginning of the semester. The students seem to get a kick out of it, and I've even had a couple of students join in with me in wearing Michigan items (e.g., shirt, cap) on Thursdays. One of my departmental faculty colleagues told me once that her father had attended UM Law School. While up in Ann Arbor a few years ago, I bought my colleague a "Michigan Law" T-shirt for her birthday, and she's worn it a few times on Thursdays.
Upon learning of the tradition, people ask me if I have a "UCLA Wednesday" in honor of my undergraduate alma mater. I don't (it would mean having a majority -- three-fifths -- of my weekday clothing decisions governed by rules and I don't want to cross that line). I do, however, frequently wear UCLA clothing on an ad hoc basis.
Talking about school spirit, an article about a teaching activity I organized with colleagues from 20 colleges and universities around the nation on measuring school spirit has just come out. With a primary focus on how to define and measure a conceptual variable (in this case, school spirit), we had students in our research and statistics classes go around our respective campuses counting the number of students wearing school garb, displaying school decals on their cars, etc. The reference is shown below or you can contact me to receive a faxed copy (see right-hand side of page for web link to me, which contains an e-mail link).
School Spirit Study Group (A. Reifman, organizer). (2004). Measuring school spirit: A national teaching exercise. Teaching of Psychology, 31, 18-21.
As early as my Texas Tech job interview in February of '97, I was told by some of the faculty members in the department (Human Development and Family Studies) that faculty and staff members throughout the campus were requested to wear the school colors of red and black on Fridays. As someone who has always had a lot of school spirit, I have adhered to the "Red and Black Fridays" dress code at probably a 99.99% rate during my seven years (thus far) at Texas Tech. Not only that; I sometimes nag new faculty members about wearing red and black on Fridays (in a friendly kind of way).
I don't know why, but early on it somehow occurred to me that I could start my own tradition of wearing maize and blue University of Michigan clothing on Thursdays, hence "Michigan Thursday." Probably the most fun aspect of Michigan Thursday is the reaction of students in my undergraduate classes, whom I inform about my tradition right at the beginning of the semester. The students seem to get a kick out of it, and I've even had a couple of students join in with me in wearing Michigan items (e.g., shirt, cap) on Thursdays. One of my departmental faculty colleagues told me once that her father had attended UM Law School. While up in Ann Arbor a few years ago, I bought my colleague a "Michigan Law" T-shirt for her birthday, and she's worn it a few times on Thursdays.
Upon learning of the tradition, people ask me if I have a "UCLA Wednesday" in honor of my undergraduate alma mater. I don't (it would mean having a majority -- three-fifths -- of my weekday clothing decisions governed by rules and I don't want to cross that line). I do, however, frequently wear UCLA clothing on an ad hoc basis.
Talking about school spirit, an article about a teaching activity I organized with colleagues from 20 colleges and universities around the nation on measuring school spirit has just come out. With a primary focus on how to define and measure a conceptual variable (in this case, school spirit), we had students in our research and statistics classes go around our respective campuses counting the number of students wearing school garb, displaying school decals on their cars, etc. The reference is shown below or you can contact me to receive a faxed copy (see right-hand side of page for web link to me, which contains an e-mail link).
School Spirit Study Group (A. Reifman, organizer). (2004). Measuring school spirit: A national teaching exercise. Teaching of Psychology, 31, 18-21.
Friday, February 27, 2004
Ann Arbor Restaurants
My postings to this point have all focused on academics. As I've said, I would also like to talk about some of the cultural/entertainment amenities of Ann Arbor. Let's start with food!
Ann Arbor probably covers the same range of dining tastes one would find in a prospering college town or in the suburbs of a major city. One area in which I would say Ann Arbor stands out is in its vegetarian dining options. As I recall, three out of the eight students in my Fall '84 entering graduate school cohort (myself included) were vegetarians, so this is of personal relevance!
The first restaurant I'd recommend to vegetarians is Seva. I make it a point to go to Seva on all my return visits to Ann Arbor. As can be seen in the comments from the linked document, Seva has a wonderful variety of food, as well as a nice atmosphere.
Another good place for vegetarians is Afternoon Delight. "AD," as some people call it, has a bright, lively atmosphere. One goes along a cafeteria-type line, either ordering a made-to-order dish or sampling from what's out, pays, and then sits down. It's a good, relatively quick place to, for example, take a break from your data analysis or writing and grab dinner. Niall Bolger, a Michigan post doc at the time and now a professor at NYU, and I used to run into each other frequently at AD.
Perhaps the restaurant most uniquely identified nationally with Ann Arbor is Zingerman's delicatessen. Although I can't find a link now, Zingerman's made some kind of USA Today Top Ten list for delicatessens a few years back. Based on things I've read over the years, Zingerman's really seems to pride itself on concentrating solely on the Ann Arbor community and not going national.
Another relatively famous place is Angelo's restaurant, which specializes in breakfasts (not being a morning person, I didn't get to Angelo's all that often). As you can hear from the Angelo's website, the place even has its own theme song! Angelo's is featured prominently in the 1989 book Big Ten Country by Bob Wood.
Ann Arbor being a college town, it naturally had a wide variety of pizza places. My favorite place -- and indeed my favorite restaurant of any kind in the nation -- was Pizzeria Uno, the deep-dish pizza place that originated on the corner of Wabash and Ohio in Chicago. To this day, I'm still trying to get to as many Uno's restaurants nationally as I can. However, the Ann Arbor Uno's, located on South University, went out of business in the mid-90s. It was the site of many grad student gatherings (birthdays, dissertation defense celebrations, etc.) during my years at UM. When not with a group, I made a weekly take-out order from Uno's.
One of the more colorful local places is Pizza Bob's on State St., known for its exotic pizza toppings.
Ann Arbor is also, of course, the home of Domino's Pizza, which was embroiled in controversy over the political views of founder Tom Monaghan (if anyone is interested in this, you can go to the Google search engine and type in the keywords "domino's pizza" "ann arbor" "monaghan," which will bring up roughly 500 hits).
Besides pizza, another robust business in town is bagels. My favorite was always The Bagel Factory, which according to the linked document, is either gone from its longtime South U. location or about to be. In recent years, I have frequented two places in the State/North U. area, Einstein Bros. and Bruegger's. Bruegger's occupies the space of the former Drake's sandwich shop (about which, more below). In what I think is a classy gesture, Bruegger's has photographs of the old Drake's on the wall.
Drake's, in my mind, was the prototypical quaint, old-fashioned, college-town hangout. It closed in 1993, but there's a nice Drake's tribute page on the web. Drake's appears to go back to at least the 1920s. From the wooden booths to the hand-painted signs, even in the 1980s Drake's probably didn't look much different from how it did generations ago. Customers would come in, go up to the counter to write out their own order on the forms depicted on the tribute site, and then go sit down and wait for their order to be called out. Drake's also had an amazing assortment of candies for sale, displayed in these large glass jars (see the photos on the tribute site).
The aforementioned restaurants are/were largely in the central campus area. The more "downtown-ish" Main Street area a few blocks from campus has some more upscale places, but I tended to stick to the campus area.
I'm obviously just scratching the surface, even with what has now become a fairly extended summary. Please e-mail me with your dining favorites and I'll post an addendum.
Ann Arbor probably covers the same range of dining tastes one would find in a prospering college town or in the suburbs of a major city. One area in which I would say Ann Arbor stands out is in its vegetarian dining options. As I recall, three out of the eight students in my Fall '84 entering graduate school cohort (myself included) were vegetarians, so this is of personal relevance!
The first restaurant I'd recommend to vegetarians is Seva. I make it a point to go to Seva on all my return visits to Ann Arbor. As can be seen in the comments from the linked document, Seva has a wonderful variety of food, as well as a nice atmosphere.
Another good place for vegetarians is Afternoon Delight. "AD," as some people call it, has a bright, lively atmosphere. One goes along a cafeteria-type line, either ordering a made-to-order dish or sampling from what's out, pays, and then sits down. It's a good, relatively quick place to, for example, take a break from your data analysis or writing and grab dinner. Niall Bolger, a Michigan post doc at the time and now a professor at NYU, and I used to run into each other frequently at AD.
Perhaps the restaurant most uniquely identified nationally with Ann Arbor is Zingerman's delicatessen. Although I can't find a link now, Zingerman's made some kind of USA Today Top Ten list for delicatessens a few years back. Based on things I've read over the years, Zingerman's really seems to pride itself on concentrating solely on the Ann Arbor community and not going national.
Another relatively famous place is Angelo's restaurant, which specializes in breakfasts (not being a morning person, I didn't get to Angelo's all that often). As you can hear from the Angelo's website, the place even has its own theme song! Angelo's is featured prominently in the 1989 book Big Ten Country by Bob Wood.
Ann Arbor being a college town, it naturally had a wide variety of pizza places. My favorite place -- and indeed my favorite restaurant of any kind in the nation -- was Pizzeria Uno, the deep-dish pizza place that originated on the corner of Wabash and Ohio in Chicago. To this day, I'm still trying to get to as many Uno's restaurants nationally as I can. However, the Ann Arbor Uno's, located on South University, went out of business in the mid-90s. It was the site of many grad student gatherings (birthdays, dissertation defense celebrations, etc.) during my years at UM. When not with a group, I made a weekly take-out order from Uno's.
One of the more colorful local places is Pizza Bob's on State St., known for its exotic pizza toppings.
Ann Arbor is also, of course, the home of Domino's Pizza, which was embroiled in controversy over the political views of founder Tom Monaghan (if anyone is interested in this, you can go to the Google search engine and type in the keywords "domino's pizza" "ann arbor" "monaghan," which will bring up roughly 500 hits).
Besides pizza, another robust business in town is bagels. My favorite was always The Bagel Factory, which according to the linked document, is either gone from its longtime South U. location or about to be. In recent years, I have frequented two places in the State/North U. area, Einstein Bros. and Bruegger's. Bruegger's occupies the space of the former Drake's sandwich shop (about which, more below). In what I think is a classy gesture, Bruegger's has photographs of the old Drake's on the wall.
Drake's, in my mind, was the prototypical quaint, old-fashioned, college-town hangout. It closed in 1993, but there's a nice Drake's tribute page on the web. Drake's appears to go back to at least the 1920s. From the wooden booths to the hand-painted signs, even in the 1980s Drake's probably didn't look much different from how it did generations ago. Customers would come in, go up to the counter to write out their own order on the forms depicted on the tribute site, and then go sit down and wait for their order to be called out. Drake's also had an amazing assortment of candies for sale, displayed in these large glass jars (see the photos on the tribute site).
The aforementioned restaurants are/were largely in the central campus area. The more "downtown-ish" Main Street area a few blocks from campus has some more upscale places, but I tended to stick to the campus area.
I'm obviously just scratching the surface, even with what has now become a fairly extended summary. Please e-mail me with your dining favorites and I'll post an addendum.
Friday, February 20, 2004
Former UM Psych Prof Nancy Cantor to Become Chancellor at Syracuse
It may not exactly be breaking news, but it's still pretty recent news. Former UM psychology professor Nancy Cantor will be leaving her position as chancellor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign to take a similar position at Syracuse University.
Nancy spent many years at Michigan (during two stints) as a professor, dean, and provost. As noted in a Syracuse document on her professional history, Nancy served from 1984-1988 as area chairperson in personality psychology at Michigan. As I've noted, however, UM's social and personality programs had strong ties and Nancy had an office in the Institute for Social Research, where the social program was based at the time (the transformation from having the different psychology areas headquartered in different buildings to the housing of all programs within a single psychology building is something I'll discuss in a future posting).
Nancy worked with several personality and social psychology graduate students during the time I was at UM (I took a class from Nancy, but never worked on research with her). During the mid-eighties, Nancy appeared to be in the closing stages of research on prototypes, an area in which she worked with students such as Nancy Genero and Paula Niedenthal (see earlier posting for link to her).
For the period of the mid-late 1980s, I mainly associate Nancy with launching an extensive program of research on construal of life tasks, such as academic achievement and seeking independence. In this endeavor, Nancy was joined by students such as Julie Norem, Sabrina Zirkel, and Chris Langston.
Also, Carolin Showers (see earlier posting for link) authored a 1985 Annual Review of Psychology chapter with Nancy entitled, "Social cognition: A look at motivated strategies."
A local news article gives some idea of the circumstances surrounding Nancy's move to Syracuse. She became involved in the controversy over the University of Illinois's Chief Illiniwek mascot. One pro-Chief supporter even bought anti-Cantor billboards!
On a more positive note, one Illinois professor said of Nancy:
"It's like a death in the family. In the 30 years I've been here, she's been overwhelmingly the most effective campus leader."
Nancy spent many years at Michigan (during two stints) as a professor, dean, and provost. As noted in a Syracuse document on her professional history, Nancy served from 1984-1988 as area chairperson in personality psychology at Michigan. As I've noted, however, UM's social and personality programs had strong ties and Nancy had an office in the Institute for Social Research, where the social program was based at the time (the transformation from having the different psychology areas headquartered in different buildings to the housing of all programs within a single psychology building is something I'll discuss in a future posting).
Nancy worked with several personality and social psychology graduate students during the time I was at UM (I took a class from Nancy, but never worked on research with her). During the mid-eighties, Nancy appeared to be in the closing stages of research on prototypes, an area in which she worked with students such as Nancy Genero and Paula Niedenthal (see earlier posting for link to her).
For the period of the mid-late 1980s, I mainly associate Nancy with launching an extensive program of research on construal of life tasks, such as academic achievement and seeking independence. In this endeavor, Nancy was joined by students such as Julie Norem, Sabrina Zirkel, and Chris Langston.
Also, Carolin Showers (see earlier posting for link) authored a 1985 Annual Review of Psychology chapter with Nancy entitled, "Social cognition: A look at motivated strategies."
A local news article gives some idea of the circumstances surrounding Nancy's move to Syracuse. She became involved in the controversy over the University of Illinois's Chief Illiniwek mascot. One pro-Chief supporter even bought anti-Cantor billboards!
On a more positive note, one Illinois professor said of Nancy:
"It's like a death in the family. In the 30 years I've been here, she's been overwhelmingly the most effective campus leader."
Friday, February 13, 2004
Today, I will start a new feature called "What Were They Working On?" in reference to faculty research in the Michigan social psychology program in the 1980s. Bob Zajonc will be the focus of this initial entry. One of the most eminent social psychologists of all-time, Bob is well-known for his work on social facilitation, mere exposure, the confluence model (family configuration and intelligence), and affect and cognition, among other things. Bob received his Ph.D. at Michigan and then remained there as a faculty member for nearly 40 years, before moving to Stanford in 1994.
According to the following biography, Bob was born in 1923. One of my classmates who saw Bob at the recent SPSP conference opined that Bob does not look that much different from how he did 20 years ago, a judgment in which I concur. Bob received the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution (DSC) Award in 1978. One study ranked him 35th among Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century. A Festschrift was held for him at Michigan in 1998, and last year, a book entitled The Selected Works of R.B. Zajonc was published.
One could spend all day citing Bob's accomplishments and impact on the field. However, in keeping with the purpose of this website, I will discuss the research he was working on during the 1980s. In February 1980, Bob's DSC Award address was published in American Psychologist with the title "Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences." Clearly, affect had become the major focus for Bob by the time my graduate school cohort entered in the Fall of 1984. In 1985, Bob published the article "Emotion and Facial Efference: A Theory Reclaimed" in Science. This article represented an attempt to revivify a much older theory by Israel Waynbaum (1907). According to a summary on the web, "Waynbaum felt that the the [sic] face muscles can constrict facial arteries and veins and thus somehow control cerebral blood flow, which is know [sic] to be important in emotions."
Starting with this idea that facial muscular movement could lead to emotional states, Bob and a number of graduate students undertook an ambitious program of empirical research relating to facial expressions and emotion. One product of this work was the 1989 Psychological Review article by Bob, graduate student Sheila Murphy, and Marita Inglehart entitled "Feeling and Facial Efference: Implications of the Vascular Theory of Emotion."
Along with Sheila, another student who worked extensively with Bob in this area was Pam Adelmann. Bob, Pam, and Sheila teamed up with another student, Paula Niedenthal, to publish a 1987 article in Motivation and Emotion entitled "Convergence in the Physical Appearance of Spouses." (As an aside, I liked the acronym that could be formed from the authors' last names, ZAMN, as in Sha-zam.) Subjects looked at photographs of individual members of married couples at the time of marriage and 25 years later. Couple members were judged by subjects to look more similar in the later pictures than in the earlier ones, possibly as a result of spouses imitating each other's facial expressions over the years and building up their facial muscles in the same way, just as exercising in a gym builds up muscles in other parts of the body. This study, in fact, was featured in an August 11, 1987 New York Times article by Daniel Goleman.
Another student who worked extensively with Bob was Danny McIntosh, in the latter part of the 1980s and into the 90s. (Current web links for all of the aforementioned students are listed below with some of my earlier postings.)
In the Fall 1985 semester, Bob also taught an excellent social cognition graduate seminar, which I was fortunate to be able to take. If anyone wants a copy of the syllabus, just e-mail me and provide a fax number!
In the summer of 2003 during a visit I made to Stanford to watch the USA Track and Field Championships, Bob and Hazel Markus were kind enough to take me to lunch on campus. Naturally, most of our time was spent reminiscing about UM and Ann Arbor. I think everyone was in agreement that, "You can take the people out of Michigan, but you can't take the Michigan out of the people!"
Additional Alumni Notes. I heard from Greg Diamond the other day. Greg was in my cohort, and after receiving his Ph.D. and teaching for some years, he switched fields. He attended Columbia Law School, where he made Law Review. If you click here and then select Greg's name in the menu of authors, you'll see one of his articles. Greg also operates his own blog on the web.
Greg suggested that I put in links to Lorraine Gutierrez and Robert Ortega, two current UM social work faculty members who were in the joint social work-social psychology program with us.
Greg also wanted to note the passing a couple years ago of Karen Siegel-Jacobs, who was a contemporary of ours in the experimental psychology program.
According to the following biography, Bob was born in 1923. One of my classmates who saw Bob at the recent SPSP conference opined that Bob does not look that much different from how he did 20 years ago, a judgment in which I concur. Bob received the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution (DSC) Award in 1978. One study ranked him 35th among Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century. A Festschrift was held for him at Michigan in 1998, and last year, a book entitled The Selected Works of R.B. Zajonc was published.
One could spend all day citing Bob's accomplishments and impact on the field. However, in keeping with the purpose of this website, I will discuss the research he was working on during the 1980s. In February 1980, Bob's DSC Award address was published in American Psychologist with the title "Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences." Clearly, affect had become the major focus for Bob by the time my graduate school cohort entered in the Fall of 1984. In 1985, Bob published the article "Emotion and Facial Efference: A Theory Reclaimed" in Science. This article represented an attempt to revivify a much older theory by Israel Waynbaum (1907). According to a summary on the web, "Waynbaum felt that the the [sic] face muscles can constrict facial arteries and veins and thus somehow control cerebral blood flow, which is know [sic] to be important in emotions."
Starting with this idea that facial muscular movement could lead to emotional states, Bob and a number of graduate students undertook an ambitious program of empirical research relating to facial expressions and emotion. One product of this work was the 1989 Psychological Review article by Bob, graduate student Sheila Murphy, and Marita Inglehart entitled "Feeling and Facial Efference: Implications of the Vascular Theory of Emotion."
Along with Sheila, another student who worked extensively with Bob in this area was Pam Adelmann. Bob, Pam, and Sheila teamed up with another student, Paula Niedenthal, to publish a 1987 article in Motivation and Emotion entitled "Convergence in the Physical Appearance of Spouses." (As an aside, I liked the acronym that could be formed from the authors' last names, ZAMN, as in Sha-zam.) Subjects looked at photographs of individual members of married couples at the time of marriage and 25 years later. Couple members were judged by subjects to look more similar in the later pictures than in the earlier ones, possibly as a result of spouses imitating each other's facial expressions over the years and building up their facial muscles in the same way, just as exercising in a gym builds up muscles in other parts of the body. This study, in fact, was featured in an August 11, 1987 New York Times article by Daniel Goleman.
Another student who worked extensively with Bob was Danny McIntosh, in the latter part of the 1980s and into the 90s. (Current web links for all of the aforementioned students are listed below with some of my earlier postings.)
In the Fall 1985 semester, Bob also taught an excellent social cognition graduate seminar, which I was fortunate to be able to take. If anyone wants a copy of the syllabus, just e-mail me and provide a fax number!
In the summer of 2003 during a visit I made to Stanford to watch the USA Track and Field Championships, Bob and Hazel Markus were kind enough to take me to lunch on campus. Naturally, most of our time was spent reminiscing about UM and Ann Arbor. I think everyone was in agreement that, "You can take the people out of Michigan, but you can't take the Michigan out of the people!"
Additional Alumni Notes. I heard from Greg Diamond the other day. Greg was in my cohort, and after receiving his Ph.D. and teaching for some years, he switched fields. He attended Columbia Law School, where he made Law Review. If you click here and then select Greg's name in the menu of authors, you'll see one of his articles. Greg also operates his own blog on the web.
Greg suggested that I put in links to Lorraine Gutierrez and Robert Ortega, two current UM social work faculty members who were in the joint social work-social psychology program with us.
Greg also wanted to note the passing a couple years ago of Karen Siegel-Jacobs, who was a contemporary of ours in the experimental psychology program.
Saturday, February 07, 2004
Updating Web Links to UM Social Psych Alums
As I had hoped, a couple of 1980s alums from the UM social psych program e-mailed me with web links to additional 80s graduates (my original set of Ph.D. alum links is located in my very first posting at the bottom of the screen). Most of the links to follow are for traditional individual homepages, but a few are to directories that list the person; the latter still provides information on where someone is now.
Paula Pietromonaco sent in a link for herself, and for Yaacov Schul. She also suggested Geoff Fong, whose website I tracked down. These people were all at Michigan in the early 80s. Another person I thought of from that era is John Bargh.
Kerth O'Brien (whose link is in the original list below) also e-mailed me several graduates' web links. I couldn't help notice that many of the people in Kerth's list are today involved in applied fields such as health care, social work, and the court system. This just shows the breadth of training and job placements one can receive from studying at UM. In addition to traditional laboratory experimental social psychology, the program provides opportunities to focus on survey research, as well as to work with faculty in other departments. Here are the people Kerth provided:
Pamela Adelmann
Jan Beals
Cleo Caldwell
Terry Conway
Charlene Depner
James Friedrich
Aida Hurtado
Oksana Malanchuk
Paula Nurius
Aloen Townsend
Kerth also noted Ruby Beale is at Hampton University, but didn’t have a webpage or e-mail address for her.
I've also found some additional links myself:
Jerry Isaac (The linked document is very long; he's listed on page 31, under Administrative Staff.)
Judy Shapiro
Lynne Sutherland
Elissa Wurf
Finally, here are two people whom I believe started the UM grad program in Fall 1989, thus barely falling within the scope of the 1980s:
Michele Acker
Diane Holmberg
Paula Pietromonaco sent in a link for herself, and for Yaacov Schul. She also suggested Geoff Fong, whose website I tracked down. These people were all at Michigan in the early 80s. Another person I thought of from that era is John Bargh.
Kerth O'Brien (whose link is in the original list below) also e-mailed me several graduates' web links. I couldn't help notice that many of the people in Kerth's list are today involved in applied fields such as health care, social work, and the court system. This just shows the breadth of training and job placements one can receive from studying at UM. In addition to traditional laboratory experimental social psychology, the program provides opportunities to focus on survey research, as well as to work with faculty in other departments. Here are the people Kerth provided:
Pamela Adelmann
Jan Beals
Cleo Caldwell
Terry Conway
Charlene Depner
James Friedrich
Aida Hurtado
Oksana Malanchuk
Paula Nurius
Aloen Townsend
Kerth also noted Ruby Beale is at Hampton University, but didn’t have a webpage or e-mail address for her.
I've also found some additional links myself:
Jerry Isaac (The linked document is very long; he's listed on page 31, under Administrative Staff.)
Judy Shapiro
Lynne Sutherland
Elissa Wurf
Finally, here are two people whom I believe started the UM grad program in Fall 1989, thus barely falling within the scope of the 1980s:
Michele Acker
Diane Holmberg
Monday, February 02, 2004
Visiting with Michigan Social Psych Folks at SPSP Conference
Just got back from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference in Austin, Texas. I would say I saw roughly 25 1980s-era Michigan people there, including those who were UM undergraduates, graduate students, post docs, and faculty members at the time. I also saw some people who came to Michigan a little after the 80s. Here are some of the people I saw (with apologies to anyone I've left out).
Hazel Markus, who spent probably over 20 years at Michigan as a graduate student and faculty member before moving to Stanford in the early 1990s, gave the SPSP Presidential Address, which was entitled "Social and Personality Psychology: Made in the USA." Continuing a long line of cross-cultural studies, Hazel focused specifically on the belief system in this country that sees the self (and only the self) as the source of individual actions, accomplishments, and choices, and on the historical and cultural supports for such a belief system. She showed videotapes of television coverage of two recent Olympic gold medalists, a US swimmer and a Japanese runner. The former, when interviewed, talked about "digging deep" within herself to summon the strength to win. The latter, in contrast, made it a point during her victory lap to acknowledge her coach, manager, and shoe designer, apparently crediting the contextual contributions to her (or her "team's") success. Both anecdotes and research studies were presented. Hazel was introduced by 80s graduate student and current Michigan faculty member Shinobu Kitayama.
Current UM Psychology Department Chair Rich Gonzalez was there. As I told Rich, I remember that when I was a first-year grad student at Michigan during the 1984-85 academic year, he came to visit as he was looking at grad schools (he ultimately opted for Stanford). What more compelling illustration is there of how time has flown by than seeing someone whom you met as a prospective graduate student now serving as department chair?
Two 80s grad students who are now based in France, Jill Klein and Paula Niedenthal, each attended the conference. Other former social psych grad students attending included Darrin Lehman (whom I had not seen in many years), Carolin Showers, Susan Cross (who suggested that this website could be used to help organize reunions of former Michigan people at future SPSP conferences), Chris Crandall, and Monica Biernat.
Daphna Oyserman, a joint social psychology-social work grad student at Michigan and now back at UM was also in attendance at SPSP. Former personality psych grad students Will Fleeson, Rob Sellers, Tim Ketelaar, and Jean Twenge were also there. Tim and Jean were actually 90s-era Wolverines.
Eighties-era UM post-docs were also well represented in Austin, including Mark Baldwin (who in between academic stints co-starred in the children's television program Camp Cariboo, which I discovered many years later on cable), Pete Ditto, Geraldine Downey, and Niall Bolger. As is frequently the case, Niall was a hub of activity; at the poster sessions and social hours, people were swarming Niall as if he were the fifth Beatle!
Jennifer Lerner, who was an undergraduate student in a section of social psychology that I TA'd (as part of a large amphitheatre-type lecture class) is now on the faculty at Carnegie-Mellon. Jennifer chaired a symposium at SPSP entitled "The Feel of a Decision."
A couple of other people I saw were Suzanne Thompson, who was a visiting faculty member at Michigan in the Winter 1985 semester, and Traci Giuliano, who visited Michigan when looking at grad schools but opted for UCLA (another fine school and my undergraduate alma mater).
(Note: People above whose names do not have an active web link should be linked in the message below.)
Hazel Markus, who spent probably over 20 years at Michigan as a graduate student and faculty member before moving to Stanford in the early 1990s, gave the SPSP Presidential Address, which was entitled "Social and Personality Psychology: Made in the USA." Continuing a long line of cross-cultural studies, Hazel focused specifically on the belief system in this country that sees the self (and only the self) as the source of individual actions, accomplishments, and choices, and on the historical and cultural supports for such a belief system. She showed videotapes of television coverage of two recent Olympic gold medalists, a US swimmer and a Japanese runner. The former, when interviewed, talked about "digging deep" within herself to summon the strength to win. The latter, in contrast, made it a point during her victory lap to acknowledge her coach, manager, and shoe designer, apparently crediting the contextual contributions to her (or her "team's") success. Both anecdotes and research studies were presented. Hazel was introduced by 80s graduate student and current Michigan faculty member Shinobu Kitayama.
Current UM Psychology Department Chair Rich Gonzalez was there. As I told Rich, I remember that when I was a first-year grad student at Michigan during the 1984-85 academic year, he came to visit as he was looking at grad schools (he ultimately opted for Stanford). What more compelling illustration is there of how time has flown by than seeing someone whom you met as a prospective graduate student now serving as department chair?
Two 80s grad students who are now based in France, Jill Klein and Paula Niedenthal, each attended the conference. Other former social psych grad students attending included Darrin Lehman (whom I had not seen in many years), Carolin Showers, Susan Cross (who suggested that this website could be used to help organize reunions of former Michigan people at future SPSP conferences), Chris Crandall, and Monica Biernat.
Daphna Oyserman, a joint social psychology-social work grad student at Michigan and now back at UM was also in attendance at SPSP. Former personality psych grad students Will Fleeson, Rob Sellers, Tim Ketelaar, and Jean Twenge were also there. Tim and Jean were actually 90s-era Wolverines.
Eighties-era UM post-docs were also well represented in Austin, including Mark Baldwin (who in between academic stints co-starred in the children's television program Camp Cariboo, which I discovered many years later on cable), Pete Ditto, Geraldine Downey, and Niall Bolger. As is frequently the case, Niall was a hub of activity; at the poster sessions and social hours, people were swarming Niall as if he were the fifth Beatle!
Jennifer Lerner, who was an undergraduate student in a section of social psychology that I TA'd (as part of a large amphitheatre-type lecture class) is now on the faculty at Carnegie-Mellon. Jennifer chaired a symposium at SPSP entitled "The Feel of a Decision."
A couple of other people I saw were Suzanne Thompson, who was a visiting faculty member at Michigan in the Winter 1985 semester, and Traci Giuliano, who visited Michigan when looking at grad schools but opted for UCLA (another fine school and my undergraduate alma mater).
(Note: People above whose names do not have an active web link should be linked in the message below.)
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Welcome and Introduction
Welcome to my website looking back on social psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan in the 1980s (primarily 1984-1989, the years I was in the program).
Those of you who were there at the same time will (hopefully) enjoy the trip down memory lane; also, the links to former students' current webpages may help you reconnect with some of your classmates. Perhaps others of you would have occasion to advise undergraduate students about possibly going to grad school at UM. Many of the faculty members and Ann Arbor institutions from the 1980s to which I will be referring in future entries are still around (see current faculty), so this page might serve as a complement to the official social psych program website.
In the coming weeks, months, and years, I plan to post entries discussing everything from some of the major research projects of the 80s, to the popular music of the day, to my favorite Ann Arbor establishments (from the Ark to Zingerman's). Faculty, post docs, grad students, and even undergraduate students who went on in the field are topics I plan to cover. I welcome any blurbs anyone out there would like to write up and send me for posting; additions and corrections to my content are also welcome. My e-mail address is alan.reifman@ttu.edu .
I will start today with links to the current webpages of some people with whom I attended grad school. Given the illustrious people who received their Ph.D. in the UM program in earlier eras, it would be silly of me to claim the accomplishments of 80s students were unique (although many 80s-era graduates have had very successful careers, including a few who have received the APA Early Career Award). In coming weeks, I will also address other topics as noted above, as well as people associated with the closely related personality psychology program and the joint social-work program.
Links to Current Webpages of Some of My Classmates, 1984-1989
(I plan to add more links as I learn of them, including those to students from the 80s who preceded or came after me)
Monica Biernat
Lisa Brown
Chris Crandall
Susan Cross
Steven Fein
Donna Henderson-King
Eaaron Henderson-King
Bob Josephs
Lee Jussim
Shinobu Kitayama
Jill Klein
Stuart Korshavn
Jon Krosnick
Ziva Kunda
Rick Larrick
Darrin Lehman
Gretchen Lopez
Daniel McIntosh
Michael Morris
Sheila Murphy
Tom Nelson
Paula Niedenthal
Kerth O'Brien
Alan Reifman
Carolin Showers
Steven Spencer
Bill von Hippel
Bernd Wittenbrink
This is a purely unofficial website. No endorsement by the University of Michigan or any of its component units is claimed.
Those of you who were there at the same time will (hopefully) enjoy the trip down memory lane; also, the links to former students' current webpages may help you reconnect with some of your classmates. Perhaps others of you would have occasion to advise undergraduate students about possibly going to grad school at UM. Many of the faculty members and Ann Arbor institutions from the 1980s to which I will be referring in future entries are still around (see current faculty), so this page might serve as a complement to the official social psych program website.
In the coming weeks, months, and years, I plan to post entries discussing everything from some of the major research projects of the 80s, to the popular music of the day, to my favorite Ann Arbor establishments (from the Ark to Zingerman's). Faculty, post docs, grad students, and even undergraduate students who went on in the field are topics I plan to cover. I welcome any blurbs anyone out there would like to write up and send me for posting; additions and corrections to my content are also welcome. My e-mail address is alan.reifman@ttu.edu .
I will start today with links to the current webpages of some people with whom I attended grad school. Given the illustrious people who received their Ph.D. in the UM program in earlier eras, it would be silly of me to claim the accomplishments of 80s students were unique (although many 80s-era graduates have had very successful careers, including a few who have received the APA Early Career Award). In coming weeks, I will also address other topics as noted above, as well as people associated with the closely related personality psychology program and the joint social-work program.
Links to Current Webpages of Some of My Classmates, 1984-1989
(I plan to add more links as I learn of them, including those to students from the 80s who preceded or came after me)
Monica Biernat
Lisa Brown
Chris Crandall
Susan Cross
Steven Fein
Donna Henderson-King
Eaaron Henderson-King
Bob Josephs
Lee Jussim
Shinobu Kitayama
Jill Klein
Stuart Korshavn
Jon Krosnick
Ziva Kunda
Rick Larrick
Darrin Lehman
Gretchen Lopez
Daniel McIntosh
Michael Morris
Sheila Murphy
Tom Nelson
Paula Niedenthal
Kerth O'Brien
Alan Reifman
Carolin Showers
Steven Spencer
Bill von Hippel
Bernd Wittenbrink
This is a purely unofficial website. No endorsement by the University of Michigan or any of its component units is claimed.
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