Michael Domjan
Professor and Chair
Department of Psychology
University of Texas at Austin
Ph.D., McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, 1973
I have been studying behavioral mechanisms of learning, primarily in animals. I have been interested in adaptive specializations and functional approaches to learning. I first studied these issues in taste aversion learning and then developed an extensive program of work to study sexual conditioning. That research involved exploring conventional learning phenomena in the sexual behavior system in an effort to evaluate the generality of learning mechanisms. It also involved exploring ways in which learning is involved in how animals respond to species typical cues or sign stimuli. This latter line of work is revealing how learning can be involved in ecologically relevant situations.
Richard Gonzalez
Professor and Chair
Department of Psychology
University of Michigan
Ph.D., Stanford University, 1990
My research interests are in judgment and decision making broadly defined. I study both normative and descriptive decision making using a variety of techniques including mathematical modeling, surveys, field observations, and experimental lab studies. I've recently extended my decision making research to applied settings in product design and medical decision making. I also do research in applied statistics, which can be construed as a form of decision making.
Lynn Hasher
Professor of Psychology andMarketing
Senior Scientist,TheRotman Institute
University of Toronto, Canada
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1970
Professor Hasher's gerontology research centers on two major issues. The first is the role that basic attentional processes play in the ability to understand language and remember events. The key question centers on how attention changes with age. The second line of work is concerned with adult age differences in circadian patterns of arousal and with synchrony effects, that is with the question of what aspects of cognition differ (or do not) when performed at an individual's optimal vs. non-optimal time of day.
E. Tory Higgins
Stanley Schachter Professor
Director, Motivation Science Center
Department of Psychology and Business School
Columbia University
Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University, 1973
Current research addresses the general question, "Where does value come from?" The classic answer to this question is that value comes from the hedonic experiences-- the pleasures and pains-- associated with some activity or object. The Higgins lab is examining another source of value experience-- how strongly one is engaged in something. Strength of engagement can be increased or decreased by several different factors. In one research program, the Higgins lab has shown that engagement strength increases when there is a fit between the manner in which people pursue a goal and their current motivational state during the goal pursuit. This regulatory fit increases the intensity of the response to something, whether that response is positive or negative. The implications of regulatory fit in particular, and engagement strength in general, are being examined in the areas of negotiation, decision making, person perception, interpersonal relationships, persuasion and performance.