Association Of Northwestern University
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Faculty Profiles |
Psychology Faculty Profiles
In late 2002,
the UPA asked professors in the department to complete a series of questions. Follow
the links below to each profile. Encourage missing professors to fill one out.
You can learn about their backgrounds, research interests, lab openings, fun
facts, and maybe even their philosophical takes on life! For contact
information on all faculty, click here.
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Galen V. Bodenhausen
Hometown/Birthplace:
Educational Background: BS,
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 was… 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
- Sad to say, I saw Jackass: The Movie
and thought it was actually fairly amusing.
[top]
Alice
Hometown/Birthplace: Born in
Educational Background: BA Radcliffe/Harvard;
Date came to NU: 1995
Classes taught/teaching: Undergraduate: Psy
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.
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
- Now I am getting mail from the Hemlock Society.
- I hope to live long enough to write several more books.
[top]
Dedre Gentner
Hometown/Birthplace:
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.
[top]
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
[top]
Joan Linsenmeier
Hometown/Birthplace:
Educational Background: BS - Mathematics and Psychology -
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; Katherine went elsewhere
as an undergrad, but maybe she'll decide to get an NU master's degree.)
Classes taught/teaching: For the past few years, I have only taught Psych
205-Research Methods in Psychology. I used to know how to teach several other
courses too. I have taught Social Psych, Experimental Social Psych,
Developmental Psych, Statistics, and Freshman Seminars. 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 “types”
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? I’d say
that, in general, it’s 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 it’s something else, rather than the repeated
contact, that makes me enjoy them. This might make a good Research Methods exam
question someday!)
[top]
Dan P. 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
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,
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.
[top]
Doug Medin
Hometown/Birthplace:
Educational Background: can be looked up on the web, maybe?
Date came to NU: 1992
Classes Taught/Teaching: Culture and Thought, Decision Making, Cognitive
Psychology
Current research pursuits: Culture, Categorization, Reasoning, Decision
Making
Do you need any help in your lab? Always
Describe the best work environment for you: one with quiet
enthusiasm
Why are you here? Because there is no
If you weren't a psychology professor, what
and where would you be? Some other kind of professor,
probably.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to
teach? I love to teach ones who love to learn. I loathe to teach ones that are asleep.
Finish this sentence: Freud was… and was not a product of his times.
[top]
Andrew Ortony
Hometown/Birthplace:
Educational Background: MA - Philosophy (
Date came to NU: 1989
Classes taught/teaching: Cognitive Science pro-seminar, Emotion,
Learning Sciences
Current research pursuits: Integrated models of affect, behavior,
cognition, and personality.
Do you need any help in your
lab? What lab? (my
mind is my lab!).
Describe the best work environment for you: collaborative,
stress-free
Why are you here? I like it here
If you weren’t a psychology professor, what
and where would you be? An opera singer
What type of student do you
love to teach? Loathe to teach? Smart and enthusiastic (I loathe the opposite).
Finish this sentence: Freud was… a cognitive psychologist before his time.
Three things every student needs to know about you:
- My bark is louder than my bite
- I'm very demanding about quality of writing
- I'm always "too busy", . . .
One thing that not many people know about you:
- I'm an open book!
[top]
Ken Paller
Hometown/Birthplace:
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.
[top]
Paul J. Reber
Birthplace:
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.
[top]
Lance Rips
Hometown/Birthplace:
Educational Background:
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.
[top]
J. Peter
Rosenfeld
Hometown/Birthplace: NYC
Educational Background: BA Columbia MA (English)
Date came to NU:
Classes taught/teaching: 312-1,2, 321, 470
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.
What type of student do you love to teach? Loathe to teacher? 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.
[top]
Satoru Suzuki
Hometown/Birthplace:
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.
[top]
Tony Z. 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.
[top]
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 was… 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.
[top]
Sandy Waxman
Hometown/Birthplace:
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
[top]
Richard Zinbarg
Hometown/Birthplace:
Educational Background: BA:
Date came to NU: 1998 (as a faculty member), 1983 (as a graduate student)
Classes taught/teaching: 201, 215, 413, 434
Current research pursuits: vulnerability to
anxiety; couples functioning in people with anxiety disorders; treatment of
anxiety disorders
Do you need any help in your
lab? Always.
Describe the best work
environment for you: One in which I have
a great deal of freedom to pursue my own intellectual interests and am
surrounded by bright, interesting colleagues – much like the psychology
department at NU.
Why are you here? I am assuming here
means NU as opposed to alive on the planet earth. Thus, I am here as NU is an outstanding
academic institution with a very strong psychology department and my wife is
from the
If you weren’t a psychology
professor, what and where would you be? A ski bum in
What type of student do you
love to teach? Loathe to teach? I love to teach
students who care more about learning than grades, who like to ask questions,
take an active roe in their learning and laugh at my feeble and infrequent
attempts at jokes. I loathe to teach
students who only show up for the final, think they have failed it and then try
to guilt me into giving them a passing grade because they are a senior and they
need the passing grade to graduate (this actually happened once).
Finish this sentence: Freud was… one of the most influential thinkers of the
20th Century, he had many interesting ideas most of which are probably wrong.
Three things every student needs
to know about you:
-My stats class (201) revolves
around team learning rather than lecture.
Most students enjoy it and learn a great deal but it is not everyone’s
cup of tea.
-I will put some questions on an
exam based on material covered in lecture only or covered in the readings only
-My dog (a 60 lb female boxer)
often visits my office, so please let me know if you are allergic or fearful so
we can arrange to meet elsewhere
Three things that not many
people know about you:
-I was placed on academic
probation as an undergraduate in my sophomore year
-My wife and I are expecting our
second child
- I can’t wait until my daughter
(who will be 3 in December) is old enough to go to amusement parks, I can’t
wait to ride a roller coaster again.
[top]
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