Uncommon Careers

Psychological science shares borders with many diverse areas. Training in psychological science thus can prepare students to succeed not only in academic departments related to psychology, but also in nonacademic worlds. I asked my colleague Sian L. Beilock to describe the initiative that she is spearheading at the University of Chicago — UChicagoGRAD — which is dedicated to teaching PhD students, including students of psychological science,...

It’s probably safe to say that most psychological scientists don’t imagine their work affecting the safety of the President of the United States. Marisa R. Randazzo, though, has found herself training the US Secret Service to keep the Commander in Chief from danger. Randazzo, cofounder of the private consulting firm SIGMA Threat Management Associates, spent 10 years as a research psychologist with the Secret Service, the last 2 years of...

Department of Music,  University of Sheffield, United Kingdom   I earned my master’s degree in musicology from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and my PhD in psychology from Radboud University, the Netherlands, where I was a member of the “Music Mind Machine” research group. I worked with two other PhD students who had backgrounds in psychology and computer science. We combined our expertise to conduct interdisciplinary...

Information and Computer Sciences Department, University of Hawai’i at Manoa My work is in the area of human–computer interaction (HCI). HCI researchers are concerned with the design and use of interactive computing systems, and more broadly with their impact on individuals and society. When I began my career, the field of HCI was just getting started. The Association for Computing Machinery was having its first conferences in an area...

Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law I research and teach at the intersection of race, psychology, and law. I’m an experimental social psychologist by training (I also have a law degree), and I research how people perceive and categorize individuals and situations — particularly identities and situations involving racial stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. My projects include investigating how the law defines race and...

Department of Surgery and Cancer , Imperial College London, United Kingdom After my first postdoctoral appointment in a psychology department, I became an assistant professor of behavioral sciences at a medical school. I lectured on medical error, the role of cognitive biases, risk perception, and risk communication in medical decisions. During this post, I obtained a national research fellowship to study adverse events in primary...

University of Michigan School of Dentistry I was on maternity leave in 1990 when the dental school administration contacted the department of psychology to find a replacement for their behavioral science instructor, who had to leave her job suddenly. Our department chair recommended me because I previously had taught courses at the medical school. I taught one course, then another, and now I am a tenured professor in the dental school...

Department of Political Science,  Stony Brook University Our department has an internationally acclaimed specialty in political psychology. My research focuses on the dynamics of public opinion, and I conduct multimethod studies that involve a mix of nationally representative sample surveys, survey experiments embedded in large-scale surveys, and content analysis. I draw on basic intergroup-relations theory and research to examine the...

APS Fellow Marita Rohr Inglehart was on the University of Michigan psychology faculty 26 years ago when she was asked to teach a behavioral science course in the university’s School of Dentistry. That led to a research focus on psychosocial and behavioral factors in oral health, and today, Inglehart is a tenured professor in the dental school. Inglehart is among a distinct group of APS members who have faculty appointments in departments or...

APS Fellow Mary Kaiser’s research domain is literally out of this world. NASA’s Mary Kaiser applied perceptual psychology to the Constellation spacecraft design to improve astronauts’ ability to read displays during massive resonant vibrations produced during launch. Working at NASA, Kaiser has employed a combination of behavioral science and engineering expertise to study how to make astronauts’ lives easier. “One of the cool...

APS Fellow Donald A. Norman may be one of the few psychological scientists whose career has included an examination of a nuclear power accident. In 1979, Norman and some colleagues “got called in to the Three-Mile Island Nuclear Power disaster [a partial nuclear reactor meltdown in Pennsylvania] to see where operators went wrong,” he recalled. “We decided that the operators had done nothing wrong, but rather that the machinery was designed...

It is rare for a psychological scientist to be able to present his or her research to the president of the United States. Coreen Farris got that opportunity when she and her colleagues delivered a report to the White House in December as part of the Department of Defense Report to the President on Sexual Assault. A behavioral scientist at RAND Corporation, Farris, along with her colleagues, recently completed the large epidemiological study...