Faculty Profiles
Northwestern University Psychology Department
A big thank you to all the faculty members who participated in our survey! We are still in the process of completing this section of the site, but newly updated profiles are listed below together with the un-updated -- past profiles may also be accessed at the old site here.
Galen Bodenhausen
Joan Chiao (updated 6/06)
Alice Eagly (updated 5/06)
Eli Finkel (updated 5/06)
Steven Franconeri (updated 7/06)
Wendi Gardner (updated 5/06)
Dedre Gentner
Marcia Grabowecky
Susan Hespos (updated 5/06)
William S. Horton [Sid] (updated 5/06)
Joan Linsenmeier (updated 5/06)
Dan McAdams
Douglas Medin (updated 5/06)
Ken Paller
Paul Reber
Lance Rips
J. Peter Rosenfeld (updated 5/06)
Satoru Suzuki
Tony Tang
David Uttal
Sandra Waxman
Richard Zinbarg (updated 5/06)
Galen Bodenhausen
Hometown/Birthplace: Ft. Worth, Texas
Educational Background: BS, Wright State University, 1982; PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1987
Date came to NU: 1996
Classes taught/teaching: 101, 204, 385, 397, 399, 483 + topical seminars
Current research pursuits: Too numerous to mention; see here.
Do you need any help in your lab: We are often looking for undergrad RAs.
Describe the best work environment for you: relaxed, positive atmosphere with a sense of humor and camaraderie
Why are you here? Because my father had sex with my mother (at least I think it was my father...) one fateful evening (at least I assume it was in the evening).
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? I have always thought it would be interesting to be an artist or writer. Or a biologist or physical anthropologist. Astrophysics is also cool. I am quite interested in Buddhism also, so maybe I should have been a monk.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? I like teaching students who are interested in the topic. I have been fortunate to work with several really excellent students who have done honors theses with me, or who work in my lab, and I am so impressed with their enthusiasm, curiosity, and generally gung-ho approach to psychology. I don't enjoy dealing with grade-grubbing behaviors, but I do understand it. There is a lot of pressure on students to maximize the GPA.
Finish this sentence: Freud wasÉ a projective test... psychologists who can't admit that Freud had interesting ideas are generally suffering from physics envy and are worried about not looking sufficiently rigorous; but those who buy entirely into Freudianism as a guiding philosophy are much more exasperating. I once heard a Freudian (former) colleague claim that women in his class were less likely than men to return pencils borrowed for an exam, and that this reflected penis envy. That is quite possibly the lamest psychological claim of all time, but he was quite serious about it.
Two things every student needs to know about you:
- I hate it when students beg for extra credit.
- I'm bad at thinking of things that students need to know about me.
Five things that not many people know about you:
- I am an inveterate Simpsons watcher and I base my life philosophy on the show.
- At the moment I am obsessed with Scrabble because of the book Word Freak.
- I own an astounding number of CDs because I love all kinds of music.
- I have lived lots of different places, including several cities in Europe, and Chicago is my favorite place.
- Sad to say, I saw Jackass: The Movie and thought it was actually fairly amusing.
Joan Chiao
Hometown/Birthplace: Miami, FL
Educational Background:
B.S. Stanford University, Symbolic Systems (2000)
Ph.D. Harvard University, Psychology (2006)
Date came to NU: June 2006
Classes taught/teaching: Undergraduate: Social and Affective Neuroscience (Fall 2006)
Current research pursuits: Cultural neuroscience
Do you need any help in your lab? Yes, yes, yes! Always excited to meet students and get them involved in research. Also interested in working with students on long-term projects such as a senior honors thesis. For students interested in doing a thesis, it's good to get involved in a lab by the beginning of junior year.
Describe the best work environment for you: Anywhere that's quiet
Why are you here? To Learn
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? Astronaut
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? It's a lot of fun to teach students who are hardworking, genuinely curious and willing to take risks.
Two things every student needs to know about you: I love meeting students and working on projects with them. Am willing to think through the craziest of ideas -- and find a way to test it (subject of course to IRB approval)!
Five things that not many people know about you: When not psychologizing, I love to play music, frisbee, travel, cook and learn whatever I can about octopi.
Alice Eagly
Hometown/Birthplace: Born in Los Angeles; lived in LA, Oakland, Long Beach, Seattle.
Educational Background: BA Radcliffe/Harvard; MA & Ph.D. University of Michigan.
Date came to NU: 1995
Classes taught/teaching: Undergraduate: Psych 339 (Psychology of Gender), freshman & advanced seminars; Graduate: Meta-Analysis; Psychology of Attitudes; various seminars.
Current research pursuits: Attitudes of men and women on sociopolitical issues; biosocial model of origins of sex differences; gender & leadership; other gender topics, such as heroism, stereotype threat, perceptions of feminism; prejudice; the content of stereotypes.
Do you need any help in your lab? Yes
Describe the best work environment for you: In my office; in my house in various locations.
Why are you here? Great department, great city, great colleagues. Who could ask for more?
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? I would be an anthropologist, sociologist, or biologist, probably also a professor. Otherwise, a science writer. I would hope to be living in an interesting large city.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? Love to teach those who have a deep intellectual interest in psychology & in learning more generally. I love them even more if they participate in class. Loathe to teach those who are not interested and/or don't come to class or do the readings.
Finish this sentence: Freud was... brilliant but flawed. I have a Freud Action Figure here on my desk.
Five things every student needs to know about you:
- I'm interested in my undergraduate students.
- I think that gender is enormously important in everyone's life & therefore they should study this topic.
- I think that analytic skills and writing skills are critical to a good university education, so in my courses students are expected to exercise, develop, & demonstrate these skills.
- I think that social psychology is fun & intellectually challenging.
- I think that Northwestern students are, in general, impressively intelligent.
Five things that not many people know about you:
- I have two children, a husband, a grandchild, and one brother.
- I don't like to watch cartoons or engage in conversation about the Simpsons.
- I left Purdue University to come here because of those calls asking me if I wanted to buy a cemetery plot for myself in Lafayette.
- Now I am getting mail from the Hemlock Society.
- I hope to live long enough to write several more books.
Eli Finkel
Hometown/Birthplace: Wilmette, IL
Educational Background: BA from NU, 1997; MA from UNC-Chapel Hill, 1999; PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill, 2001
Date came to NU: July, 2003
Classes taught/teaching: Psych 110, Psych 204, Psych 384 (Close Relationships)
Current research pursuits: Close Relationships
Do you need any help in your lab: Always, but we've been pretty full lately
Describe the best work environment for you: Coffee shop
Why are you here? It's my dream job
Steven Franconeri
Hometown/Birthplace: West Caldwell, NJ
Educational Background: Ph.D. from Harvard University, B.A from Rutgers University
Date came to NU: Fall 2006
Classes taught/teaching: Undergraduate: Fall 2006: Psych 358, Vision - From attention to aesthetics.
This seminar will survey research in high-level visual perception, through readings and group discussion of both classic and cutting-edge research papers. Why do individual birds seem to be absorbed by the flock? Why is it so hard to find Waldo? Why can movie editors make mistakes, but we donÕt notice? What is attractive about a paintingÕs composition, or a personÕs face or walk? Course topics include visual attention, perceptual organization, scene perception & visual memory, social perception of faces, bodies, & emotions, cues to agency and causality, and aesthetic appreciation of visual art & composition.
For advanced undergraduates, it may be possible to take my graduate class
(Psych 460: Special Topics in Cognition: Visual Attention & Cognition) that covers research on how we select, remember, count, compare, and track objects in the visual world.
Current research pursuits: The world presents our visual system with an overwhelmingly rich image. We cannot fully process everything at once, and instead must focus our attention on the most relevant information. My research focuses on the tools that we use to select visual information, and how these tools are applied. Can we select more than one thing at a time? How do we compare the features of two objects, or judge their spatial relations? How much of attention is automatic, and how much is under our control? How do we prioritize visual information over time, when viewing a scene, face, or painting?
This research extends to processes that support and interact with visual selection. These processes include visual memory, which helps us store what we have selected in the past, object tracking, which helps us maintain selection of moving objects, and number perception, which relies on selection mechanisms to construct the units behind the counting process. I use ERP to see how these processes unfold over time at a microscopic level, such as judging spatial relations, and eyetracking to see how we prioritize visual information at a macroscopic level (e.g., eye movements while viewing scenes, faces, and art). At the broadest level, I am also interested in how the visual system interacts with other fundamental systems, such as language, emotion, and social perception
Do you need any help in your lab? Yes!! No experience necessary. Please stop by the lab or my office to hear about what we're up to.
Describe the best work environment for you: Surrounded by curious people. And coffee.
Why are you here? Perception research is at the intersection of graphic design, computer vision, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience.... You get to play in several areas, which is great for people with broad interests.
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? Doing research in economics or computer science. Or perhaps making educational software or computer music interfaces.
Two things every student needs to know about you:
- My lab is empty without energetic undergrads
- I started working in a perception lab early in college, and loved it.
Five things that not many people know about you:
- I like squash. A lot. The sport, not the veggie. Although there's nothing wrong with the veggie.
- I am married to Professor Chiao, and we like to cook, travel, and do nerdy social perception projects together.
- I am a coffee and beer aficionado.
- As a young lad, I was an origami champ.
- During college I spent a fantastic summer in Japan creating hyper-intelligent robokittens that were designed to take over the world. Seriously. Be afraid.
Wendi Gardner
Hometown/Birthplace: born in Washington D.C. but moved to sunny south Florida at 18 months and stayed until graduate school
Educational Background: Florida Atlantic University for undergrad (BA); The Ohio State University (Go Buckeyes!) for grad school
Date came to NU: 1996
Classes taught/teaching: Introduction to Psychology, Social Psychology, and upper level courses on The Self and also on Emotion
Current research pursuits: I examine the way culture and gender influence self-construal, and the implications of different ways of viewing the self (e.g., in a more individual or social fashion) has on social cognition and behavior. I also am very interested in understanding "belonging regulation" -or in other words, the psychological processes that allow us to continually monitor and maintain our levels of social acceptance, and the ways in which our unconscious cognition and automatic behaviors enable us to be more socially skilled and likeable after a rejection experience.
Do you need any help in your lab: Yes, we almost always have projects that could use curious and motivated young psychologists!
Describe the best work environment for you: Friendly and relaxed. A goofy truth is that every office I have ever had (including my home office) has always needed to be bright yellow - so when i recently moved offices here I snuck in one weekend with some other rebellious faculty and painted the walls of my office yellow (quite illegally, shhhh. . .don't tell). I am also happiest on the days when my sweet wrinkly-faced pug dog, Lily, comes to the office with me -she usually joins me at the office every Friday.
Why are you here? In an existentialist sense or a professional sense? In a professional sense (the other question is too deep for me to answer without a beer), I am here because I love my colleagues at Northwestern, and i love how bright and motivated the students are. Its great fun to teach here.
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? Well, in my dreamlife i might be the "Food and Wine traveler" paid to travel to exotic places and eat in great restaurants and write about it in magazines. But more realistically, if I wasn't a psych prof I would probably be involved with animal welfare in some way -perhaps working at a non-profit organization, or in an animal shelter, or in an animal behavior/training program.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? I love to teach students who are intrinsically curious about human nature. I hate to teach folks who are only in it for a grade.
Finish this sentence: Two things every student needs to know about you:
(1) Students will often look at me, somewhat shellshocked, after the first exam in my class and say "but you seem so nice. . " Yup - I am nice, I also have high expectations.
(2) The other thing folks should know is that I have the cutest dog in the world -and yes, complimenting her clear and obvious loveability when you meet her is a good way to impress me- because it shows your inherent good taste and fine character.
Five things that not many people know about you:
(1) Krispy Kreme donuts are, in my opinion, a food group unto themselves and rivaled only by marshmallow Peeps in terms of foods that I know are really really bad for me, but that i cannot ever resist. Viva la Peeps! they are not only delicious, but also great fodder for science experiments -go here for proof http://www.peepresearch.org/
(2) I'm half Chinese - my Mom is from Shanghai, but folks don't know I'm Asian American because I have my Dad's all-American last name
(3) I'm a huge sucker for 'self-improvement' magazines - and sometimes get into "Martha Stewart moments" when i decide that i must paint, polish, puree, or otherwise do something else preposterously domestic. It scares my husband, but he's learned to get out of my way -and to compliment me afterwards "honey, that new squash blossom soup was so. . .interesting"
(4) I hate my hair. Always have. . .always will. And I feel great hostility for the Pantene "don't hate me because I am beautiful" shampoo model. *Great* hostility. As in, "I would run her down with my car if I saw her on the street" hostility.
(5) I once was a Druid. No seriously, when I was a child, my family was (for a very brief time) Druids and went to a church that worshipped trees and the spirits of nature. If you're guessing i was raised by "new age" parents -yes indeedy you are correct. The freaky thing is that my Mom was 'new age' before there *was* a new age. She is now a Feng-Shui consultant - and trust me, the energy in my house is soooooo well-balanced.
Dedre Gentner
Hometown/Birthplace: Reno, Nevada
Educational Background: PhD UCSD
Date came to NU: 1990
Classes taught/teaching: Cognitive Science 211, Language and thought, Representation of knowledge [grad course].
Current research pursuits: language and thought, learning and reasoning; analogy and metaphor, acquisition of word meaning.
Do you need any help in your lab? There is room for one or two more students who are interested in topics like analogical learning and reasoning; metaphor and thought; and/or the development of children's thought and language. Someone knowledgeable about online databases and corpora would fit in well with some of our current projects.
Describe the best work environment for you: Research lab with smart people who are wiling to push hard to get answers
Why are you here? To learn
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? Studying intelligent creatures -- crows or bonobos perhaps -- in the wild. Or maybe trying to save species from extinction.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? I love to teach those who are bright, energetic and genuinely curious. I loathe to teach those who are bored and cynical.
Finish this sentence: Freud was... a pioneer in the exploration of the unconscious.
Marcia Grabowecky
Hometown/Birthplace: Calgary, Alberta / Winnipeg, Manitoba
Educational Background: BA Psychology, University of Calgary; MA Cognitive Psychology, University of British Columbia; Ph.D. Cognitive Psychology, University of California, Berkeley; Post-doc Center for Neuroscience, University of California, Davis
Date came to NU: July, 1994
Classes Taught/Teaching: Intro Psych, Cognitive Psych, Perception, Visual Attention, Buddhist Psychology
Current research pursuits: Professor Suzuki and I are trying to understand how attention and adaptation interact with the processes that represent visual objects. I am also interested in spatial cognition.
Do you need any help in your lab? Often
Describe the best work environment for you: Collaborative, where at least a small number of people are working on the same questions so that ideas can spark against each other.
Why are you here? Why not?
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? Right now, probably trying to work as a ceramic artist.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? Interested / Disinterested
Finish this sentence: Freud was... largely irrelevant to the kind of psychology I'm interested in.
Five things that come to mind that every student needs to know about you:
- Plan to come to class; if you don't come to class, find out what happened there
- Use office hours to do better in class
- Expect change from the syllabus
- My classes assume that the brain and body underlie all psychological processes.
- Join our lab if you are interested in working in attention and visual perception.
Three things that come to mind that not many people know about you:
- I have a long-standing interest in Buddhism as both a religion and a theory of mind
- I enjoy ceramics, especially hand-building
- I like to read just about everything
Susan Hespos
Hometown/Birthplace: New York, New York
Educational Background: BA from Reed College in Portland, OR; PhD. from Emory University, Atlanta GA; Postdocs at UIUC, Champaign, IL; and MIT, Cambridge, MA
Date came to NU: 2005
Classes taught/teaching: Developmental Psych and Research Methods
Current research pursuits: Cognitive development: I am interested in the origins of concepts about space, objects, and number. I do behavioral testing on infants less than one year of age. I also do research in neuroscience looking at blood flow changes in babies brains using optical imaging.
Do you need any help in your lab: Yep.
Describe the best work environment for you: This one. It is intellectually challenging, supportive, and lots of fun.
Why are you here? Because I can be! The lake, the city, the colleagues, and students make it a great place to be.
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? The idea of being an architect appeals to me but I would also be happy in any job that allows me to explore and travel.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? I love students that are motivated to think and loathe ones that whine.
Finish this sentence: Freud was... an interesting historical figure but I think many of his ideas were wrong.
Two things every student needs to know about you: I work hard and I expect my students to work hard too. I am allergic to whining.
Five things that not many people know about you: I love to ride my bike to school. It is impossible for me to speak slowly. I am a terrible cook but I love to eat good food. I think every student should study abroad at some point in life.
William S. Horton [Sid]
Hometown/Birthplace: Fayetteville, AR
Educational Background: B.S. Duke University; M.A. & Ph.D. University of Chicago
Date came to NU: Fall 2005
Classes taught/teaching: Cognitive Psych (Psy228), Research Methods (Psy205)
Current research pursuits: psychology of discourse and conversation; age-related differences in language production
Do you need any help in your lab: Yes, always!
Describe the best work environment for you: I work best in my office, away from distractions.
Why are you here? Because NU is a great institution with amazing resources that support the education and research of very bright people! And Chicago doesn't hurt either.
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? I would be an architect, hopefully practicing in Chicago!
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? I love to teach students who talk back (in the good way!) and who don't mind my attempts to be funny. I loathe to teach students who disrespect me and fail to appreciate the fact that I work very hard to prepare for class.
Two things every student needs to know about you: I respond very well when I am approached in advance about special problems or situations. I respond very poorly when students expect special treatment after the fact.
Five things that not many people know about you:
- I am a tremendous fan of college sports.
- I've met Bill and Hillary Clinton (when he was governor of AR).
- I chipped out my own pieces of the Berlin Wall.
- I recently discovered the joys of Tivo.
- I want to putter in my own garden.
Joan Linsenmeier
Hometown/Birthplace: Pittsburgh, PA
Educational Background: BS - Mathematics and Psychology - Carnegie Mellon University; MA and PhD - Psychology - Northwestern University
Date came to NU: I came to NU as a graduate student in 1973. I returned as the wife of a faculty member in 1983. I've been teaching at NU since the 1987-1988 academic year. (I'm also an NU mom: David graduated in 1998, Jeremy started in 2002 and is now at the med school, and Katherine earned her master's degree through SESP in 2005.)
Classes taught/teaching: For the past few years, I have only taught Freshman Seminars and Psych 205-Research Methods in Psychology. I used to know how to teach several other courses too, including Social Psych, Experimental Social Psych, Developmental Psych, and Statistics. Once upon a time, before Prof. Eagly came to NU, I co-taught a Special Topics course on Psych of Gender with Prof. Bailey.
Describe the best work environment for you: I know from my brief stint in the business world that I don't like being stuck in my own little cubicle. I like having a job where, on most days, I work in more than one building; that way I have a good excuse for taking a walk in the middle of the day. I like having a job where I can interact with people with whom I enjoy interacting, and I like it when my work makes me think and when I have a chance to learn new things.
Why are you here? I'll answer this as "Why are you at Northwestern?" I came as a grad student because the social psych program sounded good on paper, because one of my undergrad profs said I'd like the people here, and because my boyfriend (now my husband) was a grad student here already. I came as a faculty wife because my husband (formerly my boyfriend) got a job here. I came as a faculty member myself because I was ready to go back to work, because I like hanging around on college campuses, and because Prof. Revelle, department chair at the time, invited me to teach some courses.
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? Maybe teaching something else; when I started college, I expected to become a high school math teacher. Maybe working in some other sort of non-profit setting, rather than in a school. Probably doing something where I can feel that I'm making a positive difference in the lives of children, teens, and/or young adults.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? Back in the 1970s, I held stereotypes about various ŌtypesĶ of students. For example, I thought I wouldn't like working with students in sororities, and I felt sure that I wouldn't like students who were in ROTC. I quickly learned that there were students in both of these groups whom I really liked having in my classes. I don't think there's any "type" of student that I don't like to teach. Which students do I enjoy the most? IÕd say that, in general, itÕs the ones who are part of my life for more than one quarter. I enjoy watching students learn and grow throughout their college years. (Of course, there are some confounding variables here. Students who are part of my life for more than one quarter probably share some other characteristics too. Maybe itÕs something else, rather than the repeated contact, that makes me enjoy them. This might make a good Research Methods exam question someday!)
Dan McAdams
Hometown/Birthplace: Lynwood, CA
Educational Background: B.S. Valparaiso University; Ph.D. Harvard University in Psychology and Social Relations
Date came to NU: Fall of 1989
Classes taught/teaching: Personality Psychology, Theories of Human Development, Adult Development and Aging, The Psychology of Life Stories, Research in Personality Psychology, Seminar on the Literature of Identity, Seminar on the Literature of Generativity, Individuals and Systems: The Psychoanalytic Tradition, and others I don't recall at the moment. Over the past 12 years, I have taught classes both in the Psychology Department and in the School of Education and Social Policy. I have a joint appointment in both.
Current research pursuits: I am currently on sabbatical and writing a book to be called The redemptive self: A narrative psychology of American identity. My research focuses on the topics of generativity in adult development and the meanings of people's life stories.
Do you need any help in your lab? Not at the moment. I have a full complement of 2 postdocs, 5 Ph.D. students, 1 paid research assistant, and 4 undergraduates working with me on honors projects.
Describe the best work environment for you: It depends on what I am doing. If I am writing, I work best at home. For most other things, my SESP office in Annenberg Hall functions very well. I like working with students and colleagues, but I require long periods of time alone and undistracted to get done the reading and writing that I do.
Why are you here? I am at Northwestern because this is where I have a fabulous job, Chicago is a great city, and my wife is a federal judge with life tenure here in Chicago. So this is where I am likely to be for quite some time.
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? I don't know. I might like to be a senator! I am very passionate about politics.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? I like the kind that everybody likes -- very smart, very hard-working students. And that is mainly what we have here at NU, so this is a good place for a professor to be!
Finish this sentence: Freud was... the reason I got into psychology.
Four things every student needs to know about you:
- My research is unconventional, blending behavioral science methods with approaches that come from the humanities
- I am mainly interested in how people understand the meanings of their own lives
- I am not very interested in psychopathology
- I believe that a liberal arts education is nearly the most important experience a person can have in order to live a full life
Five things that not many people know about you:
- I am committed to science, but I find many scientists to be anti-intellectual; I guess I see myself as trying to be both a scientist and an intellectual
- I have been a die-hard Chicago Cubs fan since 1962
- I am very ambivalent about religion -- fascinated with it but also sometimes repelled
- I think NU students are too serious; they need to have more fun and to relax
- I am not a very interesting person, in my opinion.
Douglas Medin
Current research pursuits: Native American Science learning, Culture and decision making, Morally-motivated decision making
Do you need any help in your lab: yup.
Describe the best work environment for you: outdoors
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? An Anthropology Professor at Montana State University
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? I coach, I don't teach. Love those who want to play.
Ken Paller
Hometown/Birthplace: L.A.
Educational Background: BS in Psychobiology from UCLA; PhD in Neurosciences from UCSD
Date came to NU: 1993
Classes taught/teaching: Psych 361: Brain Damage and the Mind, CogSci 210: Language and the Brain, Psych 460: Cognitive Neuroscience.
Current research pursuits: Human memory and perception, neural foundations of mental functions, cognitive neuroscience
Do you need any help in your lab? Undergrad students have worked in my lab for C99s, honors, projects, and work-study appointments. Occasionally there are openings for new people. Good preparation includes familiarizing yourself with our recent work by reading papers from our group such as those posted on our lab website.
Why are you here? There are many exciting questions to ask and problems to solve in cognitive neuroscience, and I am happy to be able to work at Northwestern on these issues. I have been driven to this field of study by a desire to try to understand how the mushy stuff inside our skulls provides humans with so many amazing intellectual, artistic, and creative abilities, including conscious experience, and such potential for making the world a better place. For other info, click here.
Finish this sentence: Freud was... responsible for important advances in our understanding of unconscious thought and its relationship to human behavior and conscious experience. His influence on our understanding of the mind should not be underestimated. However, psychodynamic theoretical conjectures that are not testable may not be very useful now. Yet, some hypotheses about the unconscious (or about cognitive processes not always accessible to awareness) can now be analyzed scientifically.
Paul Reber
Birthplace: Vancouver, BC Canada (US Citizen)
Date came to NU: Fall 1998
Class Teaching: 205, 363, 470 (graduate seminar)
Research pursuits: Cognitive neuroscience of memory, the neural substrates and operation of memory throughout the brain. See the lab website for more.
Do you need help in your lab? I'm always willing to discuss 399/397 projects with students. I typically expect that an interested student would take 399 first and assist on ongoing projects in the lab. If they are interested after this, we discuss developing their own projects (for 397 or 398). A number of students have gotten summer funding to work in the lab on extended independent study projects. However, we don't take 399 students every quarter, it depends on the status of ongoing lab projects that could use an extra research assistant.
Describe the best work environment for you: The best work environment is one that is intellectually rich in which theoretical ideas are frequently being proposed and scrutinized.
Why are you here? I'm here to advance the general understanding of the organization of memory in the brain and communicate this information through teaching, student supervision and discussion to the NU community. If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? Am I allowed to say I'd be a professor in another field like Neuroscience or Computer Science? Outside academia, I'd probably be working in artificial intelligence or other forms of information technology.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? I enjoy teaching students who want to learn and who aren't afraid to work hard. I am frustrated by students with a sense of entitlement -- typically these are students who are smart but don't want to put in the effort and are entirely focused on getting a grade over learning the class material.
Finish this sentence: Freud was... an important figure in the history of psychology.
Two things students should know about you:
- If you are taking a class with me: I simply want you to learn what I'm teaching. I like what I teach and if you are getting the ideas, we're both going to be happy.
- If you are considering independent study: Research is challenging and takes a serious commitment, but it's very rewarding when it works out. I'm happy to have undergraduates doing research on the cutting edge -- the workload is high, but we've published this type of work in the top journals.
Lance Rips
Hometown/Birthplace: Omaha, NE
Educational Background: Swarthmore College, BA; Stanford Univ., PhD
Date came to NU: 1993
Classes taught/teaching: Thinking; Human Memory and Cognition; Reasoning and Representation
Current research pursuits: Reasoning, Concepts, Autobiographical Memory
Do you need any help in your lab? Sometimes.
Describe the best work environment for you: library study
What type of student do you love to teach? Students who are interested in developing new ideas.
J. Peter Rosenfeld
Hometown/Birthplace: NYC
Educational Background: BA Columbia MA (English) Columbia, PhD (UIowa)
Date came to NU: 9/15/70
Classes taught/teaching: 312-1,2, 321, 470 323
Current research pursuits: Mechanisms and Detection of Deception, False Memory; Neural correlates of Emotion.
Do you need any help in your lab? Always.
Describe the best work environment for you: Happy, but serious.
Why are you here? I choose to be.
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? A writer in Chile, my wife's country.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? I love to teach an honest, normal one. I loathe to teach a neurotic liar.
Finish this sentence: Freud was... a genius with great courage and insight.
Five things every student needs to know about you:
- I'm kind.
- I'm funny, though serious.
- I am honest.
- I know a lot.
- I need to know more.
Five things that not many people know about you:
- I am an opera fanatic.
- I'm older than I look.
- I think younger than I am.
- I love sports.
- I am very well read.
Satoru Suzuki
Hometown/Birthplace: Sapporo, Japan
Educational Background: BA in Physics (1988) Wesleyan University; MS in Physics (1990) University of Massachusetts at Amherst; PH.D in Psychology (1995) Harvard University; Post Doc in Psychology (1995-1997) University of Arizona
Date came to NU: September, 1997
Classes taught/teaching: 201 Statistical methods in psychology; 324 Perception; 397/399 Independent research; 450 Fundamentals of statistics; 424 Behavioral and neural bases of vision
Current research pursuits: Visual perception and attention
Do you need any help in your lab? Students interested in vision sciences
Describe the best work environment for you: Mountain cottage (if possible)
Why are you here? If I knew the answer, I probably wouldn't be in this world.
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? I'd be writing movie scores, climbing mountains, or running experiments in my basement.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? Love to teach students who enjoy learning. Loathe to teach students who show up to sleep (even if I might justify why I did it when I was in college).
Finish this sentence: Freud was... originally a chemist.
Three things that not many people know about you:
- I was almost a music major in college (until I got a C in a medieval musicology class).
- My physics Masters thesis was about inducing plasmon oscillations in thin ethanol films (I had access to pure alcohol and 24k gold as they were consumed [actually used and discarded] by my experiments).
- Neither my going to Wesleyan, UMASS Amherst, nor to Harvard was premeditated.
Tony Tang
Hometown/Birthplace: Guiyang, China
Educational Background: Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Date came to NU: 9/2000
Classes taught/teaching: Intro to Clinical Psychology; Freshman Seminar on Evolutionary Psychology; Positive Psychology; Psychotherapy (for grad students only)
Current research pursuits: Mechanisms of psychotherapy, how do therapy produces change in patients; Evolutionary Psychology; Analyzing psychological theories on emotion and cognition with modern mathematical tools.
Do you need any help in your lab? Yes. Always looking for people who combine strong interests in emotion and cognition with good skills in mathematics or computer programming. We need help with transcribing and analyzing therapy sessions from time to time too.
Describe the best work environment for you: NU is close to ideal, especially if it is 20 degrees warmer in the winter.
Why are you here? Well, I love the lakefront campus, and the faculty members here are very interesting and supportive.
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? Too many possibilities to list here.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? I like students who actually think seriously about the material, instead of just taking notes so that they can cram for the finals.
Finish this sentence: Freud was... great.
David Uttal
Hometown/Birthplace: Lynchburg, Virginia
Educational Background: B.S., William and Mary, Ph.D., University of Michigan, Post-doc, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Date came to NU: August 1, 1993
Classes taught/teaching: Intro, Developmental, Freshman Seminars, Cognitive Development, Advanced Undergraduate and Graduate Seminars in Spatial Cognition
Current research pursuits: I'm studying two things: The development of spatial cognition, and the development of symbolic representation.
Do you need any help in your lab? Sometimes -- depends on the quarter.
Describe the best work environment for you: Well, I would like to say a calm, organized place, but sometimes I do better under stress.
Why are you here? Because of great students and great colleagues.
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? I would probably join my wife as an attorney
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? I love to teach students who want to learn (which is almost all Northwestern students). I don't like to teach students who don't want to be here. Finish this sentence: Freud wasÉ wrong but he started the field. Five things every student needs to know about you: I don't know if there are five. Come prepared and you can learn a lot. It sometimes takes time to learn how to study (in any class, not just mine)--stick with it.
Three things that not many people know about you:
- I am a fan of Sponge Bog/Square Pants
- I love Gilmore Girls
- I like to ride my bicycle but not in the winter.
Sandra Waxman
Hometown/Birthplace: Hartford, Connecticut
Educational Background: Ph.D.
Date came to NU: 1992
Classes taught/teaching: developmental, cognitive development, practicum in child development, etc.
Current research pursuits: Early language and cognitive development in infants and toddlers...
Do you need any help in your lab? Sure -- always!
Describe the best work environment for you: ??
Why are you here? I love what I do.
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? I'll tell you later.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? Love interested and interesting. Loathe bored.
Finish this sentence: Freud was... quite a theoretician.
Five things every student needs to know about you:
- I work hard and expect everyone in my lab to do the same
- You have to be reliable
- I am not especially relaxed....
- I love coffee
- Putting in the extra little bit of effort goes a very, very long way
Richard Zinbarg
Hometown/Birthplace: New York, NY
Educational Background: BA: University of Pennsylvania; PhD: Northwestern
Date came to NU: Fall 1998
Classes taught/teaching: Statistics (201), Advanced Statistics (351), Personality (215), Clinical Research Methods (434), Anxiety Assessment and Treatment Practicum (413)
Current research pursuits: Risk factors for the development of anxiety disorders and depression; developing better treatments for anxiety disorders with a particular focus on generalized anxiety disorder and the impact of couple functioning on treatment response; statistics for estimating the reliability of composite scales.
Do you need any help in your lab? Almost always.
Describe the best work environment for you: One filled with brilliant and critical students and colleagues to help identify my bad ideas and inspire good ones.
Why are you here? Well, I have excellent colleagues and students here. However, that was true at the University of Oregon as well (where I was an assistant professor for six years). The main reason for coming here from Oregon was that my wife is from Chicago and her three brothers and sisters (and their kids) are all still living in the area.
If you weren't a psychology professor, what and where would you be? A ski instructor, preferably in Utah.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teach? I love to teach students who are eager to take an active role in their learning. I loathe to teach students who want to be "spoon-fed" knowledge.
Finish this sentence: Freud was... certainly the most influential thinker the field of clinical psychology/psychiatry has ever known and will ever know (though I can imagine that others - such as Tim Beck - one of the founders of cognitive therapy - will come to be known as being as influential as Freud within the field, I can't imagine that anyone else will ever has as much influence outside of the discipline including english and history).
Two things every student needs to know about you:
-I do not believe in being bound by convention if I believe there is a more effective way to accomplish some educational goal (witness my 201 class in which I do very little lecturing).
-I have 2 young children who I am devoted to thus my hours are a bit different than those of my faculty in the department who either don't have kids or whose kids are grown (I like to get in to the office early and leave campus by about 5:30 most days).
Three things that not many people know about you:
- in a past life, I was a "Deadhead" (I attended roughly 30 concerts, have every studio and live album the band ever recorded plus many bootleg recordings, the jazz band who played at my wedding played a couple of Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia tunes at my request including "Ripple" and "They love each other", and my dog - Sugaree - is named after a Grateful Dead song)
- I started college as a biomedical engineering major and was placed on academic probation as I had a C, D, F and a withdrawal the first semester of my sophomore year (I believe I had a 4.0 every semester thereafter coinciding with switching my major to psychology, finding some discipline in my life and staying sober most of the time)
- I used to be a pretty good point guard and I was, and still am, a pretty good skier (though moguls take a bit more out of my knees than they used to)
- I bought my first Harry Potter book ostensibly for my eldest child and started to read it supposedly just to check it out to see if it would be suitable to read to her someday and became totally addicted such that I have now read them all (some in just two or three largely sleepless days) and we have still not yet reached the age when we have begun to read any to her!
- two of my favorite novels of all time are both by Herman Hesse: Siddharta and Steppenwolf (and, at least according to my interpretation, they both contain psychological insights that I find very useful in my own life and in my work with my psychotherapy patients)