John T. Cacioppo, the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor, was recently awarded the Phoenix Prize, the Division of the Social Sciences’ highest honor. Professor Cacioppo was selected to receive this award because his career-long contributions to the fields of psychology and neuroscience have had a global influence on the direction of research and inquiry and have led to a greater understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying social processes and the effects of social factors on biological processes. Since the outlining of the field of social neuroscience by Cacioppo and colleague Gary Berntson in American Psychologist in 1992, the field has become a dynamic area of inquiry within psychology and the neurosciences.

“Put simply, John is one of those once-in-a-generation psychologists whose impact is felt broadly and deeply within the field. He is a creative genius whose cumulative accomplishments (represented in over 500 research papers and 20 authored or edited books) are so inseparable from the field that it is hard to imagine contemporary psychology without him,” wrote longtime collaborator Richard E. Petty, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Psychology at The Ohio State University.

The Phoenix Prize was established in 1994 by former Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences Colin Lucas to constitute the highest faculty recognition the Division could bestow. It is to be awarded only periodically to those who, through the course of their careers, have changed the trajectory of research in the social sciences and have thus contributed to the cycle of intellectual renewal across the disciplines. It is this sense of renewal that is encapsulated in the prize's name, drawn from the symbol of our University.

The Phoenix Prize was bestowed at a dinner held on October 30th. An academic conference in Cacioppo’s honor, is being planned for Spring 2018. 

This past Spring, Susan Goldin-Meadow, the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor, was invited to deliver the University of Chicago’s prestigious Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture, an honor given to faculty who have made research contributions of lasting significance.

Professor Goldin-Meadow’s lecture explored the resilience of language and gesture in the way people communicate, drawing on her current research on the gestural languages that deaf children in the United States and in Nicaragua create without benefit of linguistic input. She described how children who are congenitally deaf and unable to learn the spoken language around them, without any exposure to sign language, nevertheless use their hands to communicate in a way that takes on many of the forms and function of language. In addition, Professor Goldin-Meadow discussed the gestures that hearing people use when talking, the resilience of those gestures within the speech system, and the role that the gestures play in how we learn. “Gesture is versatile in form and function.  Under certain circumstances, gesture can substitute for speech, and when it does, it embodies the resilient properties of language. Under other circumstances, gesture can form a fully integrated system with speech.  When it does, it both predicts and promotes learning.” Goldin-Meadow said.

Steven Shevell, the Eliakam Hastings Moore Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology and Ophthalmology & Visual Science, and faculty member in the graduate program in Computational Neuroscience, was elected an Honorary Member of the International Colour Vision Society at its meeting in Erlangen, Germany this summer. The distinction is awarded occasionally by a vote of the Society’s membership and recognizes longstanding contributions to color science. Shevell's research interests include human vision (especially color) and mathematical psychology. 

This past Spring, two department faculty, Greg Norman and Alex Shaw received the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science in recognition for their early career contributions to the field of psychology. The APS Rising Star designation is presented to outstanding psychological scientists in the earliest stages of their research careers post-PhD whose innovative work has already advanced the field and signals great potential for their continued contributions.

Norman's research explores social contributions to stress reactivity, emotion, and health through studies ranging from molecular neurobiology to social neuroscience. Norman takes a multilevel approach to the study of the mind, brain and social behavior and incorporates a wide range of methodological and theoretical perspectives that range from molecular and systems biology to cognitive and social psychology. 

Shaw's research focuses on how human beings navigate the complex social world by tracking reputations and signaling to each other. He studies fairness, intellectual property and reputation and how these things develop throughout childhood. Shaw’s investigations draw on theories from philosophy and behavioral economics as well as developmental, social, and evolutionary psychology to investigate the ways in which people modify their behavior to change how others see them. Shaw also has research on children’s developing intuitions about intellectual property, morality, resource conflict, gossip, and alliances (friendships).