Psychological Science

About the Author

Elizabeth Phelps is Pershing Square Professor of Human Neuroscience at Harvard University. Her lab— The Human Neuroscience of Affect, Learning, and Decision Making—researches the ways that emotions color our lives, in that even subtle, everyday variations in our emotional experience can alter our thoughts and actions. By uncovering the impact of emotion and affect on cognition, she aims to both enhance the understanding of cognition broadly and provide insights into social processes and psychological disorders. Phelps has won many research awards, most recently the prestigious George Miller Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience. She has served as president of the Association for Psychological Science, the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society, and the Society for Neuroeconomics. Elliott Berkman is Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon, our largest Psychological Science adopter. His Social and Affective Neuroscience lab researches the motivational and cognitive factors that contribute to success and failure of real-world goals, as well as the neural systems that support goal pursuit. In addition to studying how goal pursuit works, Elliott’s research also seeks ways to facilitate health behavior change goals such as cigarette smoking cessation and dieting. He’s won numerous awards for early career research and teaching and is active on social media. His highly popular article, The Self-Defeat of Academia makes a strong case for psychologists to better communicate the societal impact of their research. He brings that thoughtfulness and societal impact to his revision of Psychological Science. Elliott teaches courses in introductory psychology, statistics, neuroimaging, and social psychology. His students have called his teaching "amazing, funny, and engaging." His blog,?The Motivated Brain, is located at Psychology Today, and he tweets as?@Psychologician. Michael Gazzaniga is the director of the SAGE Center for the Study of Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his PhD from the California Institute of Technology, where he worked with Roger Sperry and had primary responsibility for initiating human split-brain research. He has established Centers for Cognitive Neuroscience at Cornell Medical School; the University of California, Davis; and Dartmouth College. He is founder of the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute and founding editor of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. He was a member of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2009. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences.