The Association for Psychological Science (APS) has awarded the 2023 APS Lifetime Achievement Awards to 13 psychological scientists whose contributions have advanced understanding of topics ranging from anxiety and fear to team effectiveness. APS’s four lifetime achievement awards—the APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award, the APS Mentor Award, the APS William James Fellow Award, and the APS James S. Jackson Lifetime Achievement Award for Transformative Scholarship—are the association’s highest honors, and their recipients represent the field’s most accomplished and respected scientists.
“The Association for Psychological Science is honored to recognize and celebrate the significant scientific achievements of the world’s leading psychological scientists,” said APS Chief Executive Officer Robert Gropp. “Our 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award recipients have made important and transformative contributions to research and mentoring. Their scholarship has contributed greatly to science and human well-being more generally.”
These individuals will be celebrated during the 2023 APS Annual Convention in Washington, D.C.
2023 APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award
The APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award honors APS Members for a lifetime of contributions to the area of applied psychological research and their impact on a critical problem in society at large.
Gene H. Brody, University of Georgia
Gene Brody is a Regents’ Professor in the Center for Family Research at the University of Georgia. His work has changed the landscape of developmental, health, and prevention science by demonstrating its potential for narrowing social and racial disparities in health and well-being. In addition, his prospective investigations of resilience among Black Americans have set a standard for conducting research with historically underrepresented populations that focuses on strengths rather than deficits and uses ecologically and culturally sensitive methods. Brody’s renowned work in the development of family-centered prevention programs has been shown to deter youth engagement in risky activities and promote mental and physical health. He has helped many youths in their journey through adolescence by identifying factors in support networks that buffer them from the consequences of chronic environmental stress. No less notable are his theoretical contributions to psychology, wherein he demonstrated how resilience is only “skin-deep” for some Black youth.
Michelle Craske, University of California, Los Angeles
Michelle Craske is a professor of psychology and of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is also director of UCLA’s Anxiety and Depression Research Center and co-director of the UCLA Depression Grand Challenge. A leading clinical scientist working in the broad area of fear, anxiety, and depression, her extensive list of publications includes more than 570 peer-reviewed journal articles as well as many academic, clinical, and self-help books. Throughout her career, Craske has demonstrated an immense scope of influence in psychological science. She ran a phobia and anxiety disorders clinic at the State University of New York at Albany and has gained international recognition for her research on panic, fear, and avoidance. As co-director of the UCLA Depression Grand Challenge, she developed the STAND (screening, tracking and treating anxiety and depression) program providing students with free and accessible mental health resources.
Eduardo Salas, Rice University
A leading expert in the area of team science, Eduardo Salas is a professor and Allyn R. and Gladys M. Cline Chair of Psychology at Rice University. His work developing evidence-based principles to help organizations design, develop, deploy, and manage teams has resulted in significant benefits to society and multiple applied domains. Salas’s research seeks to uncover what facilitates teamwork and team effectiveness in organizations; how and why team training works; how to optimize simulation-based training; how to design, implement and evaluate training and development systems; how to create a safety culture; and how to generate evidence-based guidance for those in practice. The broad impact of his research in teamwork and training is demonstrated in projects with multiple government agencies and industries including aviation, law enforcement, disaster management, space exploration, and health care.
2023 APS Mentor Award
The APS Mentor Award honors the importance of mentoring in the field of psychological science as well as the dedication and impact of individuals with a distinguished record of teaching, advising, and encouraging students and colleagues.
Mahzarin R. Banaji, Harvard University
Mahzarin Banaji is the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Best known for her work popularizing the concept of implicit bias, she spearheaded (with her own mentor Tony Greenwald and her student Brian Nosek) the movement to illuminate the ways in which the social world imposes structure and value on the individual’s conscious and nonconscious mind. As a mentor, Banaji’s influence has changed countless lives and careers for the better. Advisees single out her rigor and high standards, her clarity and courage, her patience and tenacity, her hands-on collaboration, and above all her visionary belief in their potential—even when they doubted themselves. On more than one occasion, dozens of former lab members and their families cleared their calendars and traveled long distances to join lab reunions, or “Camp Banaji.” “By day we hiked and whale watched, and by night we had salon style conversations about the state of the field, one attendee recalled. “The creation of this collective, this community—this is mentorship at its finest.”
Stephen Hinshaw, University of California, Berkeley; University of California, San Francisco
Stephen Hinshaw is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. His work focuses on developmental psychopathology, mental illness stigma, and clinical interventions with children and adolescents, especially those with externalizing behavior dimensions and disorders. Former students and advisees credit Hinshaw’s guidance and support—academic and emotional—as the bedrock of their growth and success in the career paths of their choosing, exemplifying the qualities of a great mentor. They remember his inspiring and popular classes, his “encyclopedic knowledge of basic science and quantitative methods,” and his infectious thrill in charting new scientific territory. They also cite his warmth and ready availability, and his astonishingly speedy and thorough responsiveness. Echoing a recurring theme, one nominator wrote, “I cannot stress how helpful it is as a graduate student to receive such timely feedback on my questions, issues, initiatives—and manuscripts—which in turn allowed me to be much more productive (and responsive to others).”
Ellen Markman, Stanford University
Developmental psychologist Ellen Markman is the Lewis M. Terman Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Her research interests include the relationship between language and thought, early word learning, categorization and induction, theory of mind and pragmatics, implicit theories and conceptual change, and how theory-based explanations can be effective interventions in health domains. Markman’s impact on the field of developmental psychology includes not only the degrees and appointments her former advisees went on to secure but also their success forging innovative new research directions and teaching others. They credit this to her insightful analysis, her probing but respectful critiques, her creative approach to research questions—and, in particular, her skill pushing students to improve their thinking and hone their ideas. Another hallmark of Markman’s mentoring influence is intellectual generosity which extends to personal issues as well. "The personal connection that Ellen forged with me also made me realize…how critical it is to treat students as whole people who are trying to figure out their lives rather than interacting with them just in their capacity as research collaborators.”
Nora Newcombe, Temple University
Nora Newcombe is a Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple University. Marked by theoretical grounding and methodological soundness, her research has contributed greatly to our understanding of spatial development and navigation. As a mentor, Newcombe’s gifts fall into three categories: scientific, career, and personal. She is “approachable, inspiring, curious, warm, kind, and she knows when to provide a patient ear and when to lend sage advice,” one advisee wrote. Others credit her with facilitating a multitude of connections and opportunities extending well beyond the United States. Newcombe is also lauded for exemplifying healthy professional behavior and being notably supportive of women and students from underrepresented or disadvantaged groups. Wrote one mentee, “her understanding and outright support of balancing the pursuit of science with living your life. Especially as a woman in science, the idea of starting a family can seem unrealistic at best or even ‘career suicide’ …. But I always knew I had an ally in Nora.”
Robert M. Sellers, University of Michigan
Robert Sellers is the Charles D. Moody Collegiate Professor of Psychology and a professor of education at the University of Michigan. His seminal work on Black racial identity and its role in buffering against the harmful effects of racial discrimination has greatly advanced the field of Black psychology. In a large-scale mentoring effort, he is one of the founders of the Black Graduate Conference in Psychology, providing graduate students with access to high-quality feedback on their work, intense professional development, and access to a network of successful academics. In his direct mentoring, Sellers prepares his students to develop programs that make a difference in the world, supports them through personal struggles, and helps them understand and navigate academic spaces as well as the job market. In so doing, he demonstrates rare selflessness and generosity. Sellers “is the most sincere, effective, and generative mentor I have known,” wrote one former student. Another former mentee recalled, “when I was on the job market, he flew across the country from his sabbatical to help me with my practice job talk.” Remarkably, “he provides this same level of personal attention to numerous others.”
2023 APS William James Fellow Award
The APS William James Fellow Award honors APS members for their lifetime of significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology.
Kent Charles Berridge, University of Michigan
The James Olds Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan, Kent Charles Berridge is a neuroscientist and psychologist focused on improving understanding of the neural mechanisms of emotion, motivation, learning, and reward. His seminal research demonstrated that the neural circuitry mediating wanting (mesolimbic dopaminergic pathways) is different from the circuitry mediating liking (nondopaminergic pleasure hotspots). This distinction helped to redefine the field of affective science and advance interventions for conditions including gambling, drug addiction, and alcoholism. His research pushes the boundaries of how the brain maps and interprets pleasure and fear, desire and addictions, and integrates these states with emotions. Indicators of his influence and impact include more than 78,000 citations, and over a dozen papers with greater than 1,000 citations.
Angela D. Friederici, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Angela D. Friederici is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking research that advances the understanding of topics such as the neural basis of language, how the human brain processes and acquires language at different stages of development, and functional similarities and dissimilarities between language and music processing. A founding director and professor at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, her multidisciplinary approach to research incorporates findings from such diverse disciplines as neurology, neuroanatomy, and imaging sciences. Early in her career, she established the functional autonomy of the syntactic system and its relative independence from semantic processes. She later moved to event-related potential (ERP) studies and pioneered the development of novel paradigms for investigating the time course of syntactic processing in auditory language comprehension. Friederici has published nearly 500 peer-reviewed journal articles that are highly cited. She has fundamentally changed the understanding of language processing in the brain, and, in so doing, launched a generation of scholars around the world.
Vonnie C. McLoyd, University of Michigan
Vonnie McLoyd is an Ewart A. C. Thomas Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, where she also received her master’s and PhD degrees. McLoyd examines social variables in detail to understand their contributions to the ways in which individuals grow and change. She pioneered attempts to describe the psychological processes through which economic deprivation influences Black families and children, and her work has guided the development of effective prevention and intervention programs for Black communities. McLoyd’s influential work continues in the classroom, public policy, societies and committees, and scientific journals. Among her dozens of highly cited published papers, a seminal 1998 article on socioeconomic disadvantage and child development helped usher in an unprecedented focus on socioemotional learning as related to children in poverty. She has significantly advanced knowledge and social policy about the impacts of poverty and racism on the psychological development of young children and has inspired scores of young researchers.
2023 APS James S. Jackson Lifetime Achievement Awards for Transformative Scholarship
The APS James S. Jackson Lifetime Achievement Award for Transformative Scholarship honors APS members for their lifetime of outstanding psychological research that advances understanding of historically disadvantaged racial and ethnic groups and/or understanding of the psychological and societal benefits of racial/ethnic diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Sandra Graham, University of California, Los Angeles
Sandra Graham is the Distinguished Professor and Presidential Chair in Education and Diversity in the Department of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Known for her scholarship at the intersection of educational, developmental, and social psychology, she has made major contributions to the studies of motivation, aggression, bullying and peer victimization, ethnic diversity, and intergroup relations, with a focus on children of color. She has also contributed to important interventions and policy reforms affecting youth, including advising on school zero-tolerance policies, violent video games, and juvenile justice. She started her research career by examining the social context of attributions in the classroom. Her innovative experimental research helped pave the way to large-scale motivational interventions that are in use today. Graham has also focused on the connection between academic and behavioral problems, including aggression, peer victimization, and self-blame. As a teacher and mentor, she has inspired many psychology students and a remarkable number of notable Black women scholars.
Janet Helms, Boston College
Janet Helms is the Augustus Long Professor Emeritus in Measurement and Assessment in the Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology at Boston College. Her pioneering work on racial identity, multiculturalism, and social justice has influenced generations of researchers and practitioners, and several of her contributions—including her foundational theory on Black and White racial identity and her focus on White self-reflection as crucial to the development of an antiracist White identity—have been woven into the fabric of mainstream conversations on race. Helms’s additional contributions to the field are vast. As a leader of the Culturalist perspective, she argued that the traditional “nature versus nurture” dichotomy excludes the roles of racial and cultural socialization, particularly when it is used to explain racial or ethnic group differences. In a career marked by tireless service to improve the field, she has also long advocated against structural racism within it, demonstrating how the racial identity of predominantly White researchers, for example, affects the design and interpretation of research on race and ethnicity.
About the Association for Psychological Science
As the premier international organization dedicated to advancing scientific psychology across disciplinary and geographic borders, APS is the scientific home of thousands of leading psychological science researchers, practitioners, teachers, and students from around the world. Learn more about APS, including its 2022–2027 Strategic Plan, at psychologicalscience.org/about.