annurev-psych-052913-074851

PS65-FrontMatter ARI 13 November 2013 20:27

Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.

PS65CH01-Sternberg ARI 31 October 2013 9:15

I Study What I Stink At:Lessons Learned froma Career in PsychologyRobert J. SternbergOfce of the President, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming 82071;email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2014. 65:116

First published online as a Review in Advance onSeptember 18, 2013

The Annual Review of Psychology is online athttp://psych.annualreviews.org

This articles doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-052913-074851

Copyright c 2014 by Annual Reviews.All rights reserved

Keywords

intelligence, creativity, wisdom, leadership, love

Abstract

I describe what I have learned from a rather long career in psychology. Mygoal is to aid those younger than I to learn frommy experience and avoid mymistakes. I discuss topics such as the damage that self-fullling propheciescan do, the importance of resilience, the need to overcome fear of failure, theimportance of being exible in ones goals and changing them as needed, therelevance of professional ethics, and the need to bewise and not just smart. Inthe end, we and our work are forgotten very quickly and one should realizethat, after retirement, it likely will be ones family, not ones professionalnetwork, that provides ones main source of support and comfort.

1

Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


Contents

INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2ELEMENTARY AND JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2THE COLLEGE YEARS AT YALE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5THE GRADUATE SCHOOL YEARS AT STANFORD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7THE FACULTY YEARS AT YALE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8THE DEANSHIP YEARS AT TUFTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13THE PROVOSTSHIP YEARS AT OKLAHOMA STATE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13THE PRESIDENCY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14FINAL THOUGHTS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

INTRODUCTION

I study what I stink at. After 38 years, 1,500 publications, 50 grants, and 13 honorary doctoratesin the eld, I have learned a lot of lessons from my research, teaching, and writing, and I hopethis article will be useful to those at an earlier stage in career than I who might prot in some wayfrom these lessons. Most of the lessons I learned were from my numerous failures.

My goal in this article is not to reviewmy research per se, which I have written about elsewhereover the years of my career (Sternberg 1977, 1985, 1990, 1997b,c, 1998a,b, 2003, 2010; Sternberget al. 2000, 2011; Sternberg & Lubart 1995). Although I briey review the trend of my research,my goal rather is to discuss my experience of being in the eld and what I have learned from thatexperience.

I have found the pursuit of psychology just the best way to understand much of what I havetried to do in my life that has not worked out particularly well. Quite simply, in my career, I havegenerally gotten inspiration by studying things in which I failed. I started studying and writingabout intelligence because I did poorly on IQ tests as a child; I started thinking about creativity ata point in my career when I ran out of ideas; I started writing about love when my love life was notdoingwell; I wrote about thinking styles because of experiences I had hadwheremyway of thinkingand learning seemed not to match teachers expectations; I started studying wisdom because I hadgiven bad advice to a student; I started studying leadership because I most unfairly and grievouslylost the election in grade 5 for the vice-presidency of the student council to a kid whose speechwas far worse than mine (so I thought); and so forth. Studying my failures has worked for me. Inever studied the things I found to be easy, such as writing. I would have made no progress at allin studying those things because I had no insight into what made them hard for others.

If there is a message in this article, it is this: Over the years, I discovered many challengesin my work. The greatest challenge by far has not been in doing research, teaching, or doingadministration, but rather in showing resiliency in the face of negative feedback and conqueringthe fear of failure. If I look back at the students frommy Stanford PhD graduate times, it is evidentthat the ones who succeeded often succeeded by sheer perseverance as much as by anything else.

ELEMENTARY AND JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

I had just nished rst gradeI would have been 7 years old. I was walking home when anolder student accosted me and asked me if I had been promoted. I did not know what the wordpromoted meant. But I did not want the student to know I didnt know. So I said that, no, I had

2 Sternberg

Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


not been promoted. He said he was sorry to hear it. When I got home, I asked my mother whatthe word meant. I found out, and also found out that I had indeed been promoted. Importantlesson: If you dont understand a question, or dont know the answer, dont fake it. Youre betteroff just admitting your ignorance.

My rst published article was when I was in sixth grade, when I was 12: It was a review ofTom Sawyer for a weekly newspaper for elementary school students called My Weekly Reader. Thenewspaper was circulated all over the United States. Ironically, this earliest piece was probably themost widely circulated piece I have ever written. I learned a lesson from this experience, namely,that even a 12-year-old can do something that is circulated nationally. It made me aware that theworld upon which I could have some inuence was not limited to Maplewood, New Jersey, oreven to the state of New Jersey, which at the time seemed to be most of the world. Kids needto realize that they can speak with a voice that extends way beyond the environments they haveexperienced.

But my main interest in elementary school was not in literature but rather in psychology. As achild in the early grades, I failedmiserably on IQ tests. In the late 1950s, when I went to elementaryschool, the authorities (at least where I lived) would give IQ tests every couple of years. Im notsure why. The school psychologist who would come in to administer the tests scared the bejesusout of me. I dont know exactly why. I just thought she looked scary. Perhaps anyone giving suchtests would scare me. But as soon as she entered the classroom, I had acquired a conditionedresponse that resulted in my freezing up. I remember that when taking the tests other childrenwould be turning the page while I still would be on the rst problem. Of course I did poorly onthe tests. As a result, my teachers in my early elementary school years thought I was stupid; Ithought I was stupid; my teachers were happy that they had me pegged as stupid; I was happy thatthey were happy; and everyone was pretty happy about the whole thing. But each year in earlyelementary school I did a little worse than I did the previous year.

Then, in fourth grade, I had a teacher, Mrs. Alexa, who, for whatever reason, thought therewas more to a child, and to me, than just an IQ score. She made clear to me she expected more ofmethat she expected me to become an A student. I really liked Mrs. Alexa. I recall thinking atthe time that it was too bad she was so much older than I wasand married. In any case, I wantedto please her, and to my own astonishment, I became an A student. I learned what so many hadlearned before me, the power of self-fullling prophecies (Rosenthal & Jacobson 1968).

Years later, I was invited back to speak at my elementary school in Maplewood. They knew ofMrs. Alexa because I had dedicated my book Successful Intelligence (Sternberg 1997b) to her. ButMrs. Alexa was long gone from the school and community. The administrators tried to nd herwithout success. Then, one of the administrators had the bright idea to let her teenage son try tond Mrs. Alexa on the Internet. He succeeded in a matter of minutes, I was told. She was livingin New Hampshire. She was invited to come to the event where I would speak, and she accepted.I went to see her in New Hampshire before the event. I didnt recognize her, and it was prettyobvious she didnt remember me, although she said she thought she might. But it was nice to seeher, in any case. At least, Im pretty sure it was she.

When I was in sixth grade, someone came into my classroom and took me out. The purpose,it turned out, was to take me back to a fth-grade classroom to take that years IQ test withthe fth-graders. Apparently, they thought the sixth-grade test would be too hard for me. Thismaneuver on their part had an unexpected consequence, at least for me. Whereas I was petriedwhen I took the IQ test in the company of my classmates, I found I was much less nervous inthe company of fth-graders, who to me were babies. I, after all, was a sixth-grader, soon to begraduated from elementary school. So I took the test without test anxiety, and oddly enough, after

www.annualreviews.org I Study What I Stink At 3

Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


that one success experience, I never was nervous again taking standardized tests. I learned thateven with one success experience, one can overcome deeply seated anxieties.

My rst major research project was in grade 7, when I was 13. I wanted to understand whyI did so poorly on IQ tests. My rst research on the topic actually was for my seventh-gradescience project. The project involved my creating my own (rather pedestrian) intelligence test.The test, which I called the Sternberg Test of Mental Abilities [Im sure youve heard of the test,well-known (only to me) by its acronym STOMA!], was basically a hodgepodge of kinds ofsubtests investigators had used over the years. I actually administered this hodgepodge to a bunchof people and discovered that using lots and lots of subtests yielded rank-order scores amongpeople that were not much different from the rank-order scores obtained from using substantiallyfewer subtests. In other words, I had rediscovered Spearmans (1927) general intelligence, or g.Just giving people a lot of tests does not necessarily increase the precision or validity of onesmeasurement. The issue, I would discover much later, is which tests one chooses to administer.

My project also involved researching the history of intelligence testing. In the course of doingthis research, I discovered the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test in a book in the adult section ofthe library in my hometown. I thought it would be a useful experience to give the test to some ofmy classmates.

This aspect of the project was somewhat ill fated. The rst person to whom I gave the test wasa girl in whom I was romantically interested. I thought that giving her the IQ test would interesther in me. I was wrong. Important lesson here: If you are romantically interested in someone,dont give the person an IQ test. I am very happily married to my wife, Karin, and have nevergiven her an IQ test. I plan to keep it that way.

A person to whom I later gave the IQ test was a friend I had known from Cub Scouts. Un-fortunately, he suffered from a serious mental illness. I believe the technical term is that he wasa tattletale. He told his mother that I had given him the test. Apparently, being a tattletale isheritable, because she told the junior high school guidance counselor. It appears that being atattletale also is contagious, because she told the head school system psychologist. He came tomy school, called me out of second-period social studies class, and balled me out for 40 minutes,ending with the comment that he personally would burn the book if I ever brought it into schoolagain. He suggested I study intelligence in rats, although I do not think he was offering himselfas a subject. There is a lesson there, which most parents and child psychologists know: If youwant to discourage a child from pursuing an interest, dont forbid the child to pursue that interest.It makes the interest so much more appealing to the child. I suspect the psychologist sealed mylifelong interest in the topic of intelligence.

My science teacher thought more of my report than the psychologist did: He gave me an A onit. He also defended me from the onslaught. I learned again how a teacher could save a child fromfeeling destroyed.

In grade 11, we had to do an independent project in physics. My grades had shown a prettysteady trajectory. The rst marking period I got an A, the second one a B+, the third one aB, and I think you get the idea. I wondered why my performance in physics was agging. Wewere taking what was supposed to be an innovative course, called PSSC physics, but I found itto be close to incomprehensible. So I created a physics aptitude test, which basically measuredtwo kinds of skillsquantitative reasoning and mechanical reasoning. I came to realize that I wasgood at the former but rather poor at the latter. And as the physics course progressed, it involvedmore and more mechanics. The physics teacher was impressed and gave me an A on the project,although it did not save my grade in physics.

The next summer, at age 17, I was admitted to a National Science Foundation program atRoswell ParkMemorial Institute in Buffalo, New York. It is a cancer institute, and I chose to be in

4 Sternberg

Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


the biostatistics department because I was interested in statistics. But I ended up being somethingof a mist. So I gave up on biostatistics, learned to program in FORTRAN, and wrote a programthat would score the physics aptitude test if the test were administered on what I believe werecalled port-a-punch cards. You punched out your answers on a computer card. (What youngperson today even knows that computers used to read cards through a card reader?) Amazingly, mynow-former physics teacher allowed me to administer the test to students in physics, and I foundthat it predicted grades with a validity coefcient in the 60s, which was pretty darn impressive. Isaw that, even as a high school student, I could create a test that actually worked.

The summer after that, the summer of 1968, I was ready for something new, so I wrote to thePsychological Corporation, a testing company in New York, modestly asking that they hire mefor the summer. They were intrigued and asked me to come to New York for an interview. I did.They interviewed me and also gave me an ability test. They hired me. They paid me a royal $100a week. I was delighted. I spent the summer there, working on a variety of projects, but mostlyon the Miller Analogies Test, a high-level test used for graduate admissions. The next summer,1969, I worked there again. The work I did became the basis for a book I later wrote in graduateschool when I was short on money, How to Prepare for the Miller Analogies Test (Sternberg 1974).It was my rst published book. The book is still in print, entering its eleventh edition. Sadly, thisless-than-monumental volume is the most successful book I have ever written, at least in terms ofgoing into successive editions.

THE COLLEGE YEARS AT YALE

I was going to need a scholarship to go to college. My brother Paul and I are rst-generationhigh school graduates. My father dropped out of high school in the Depression; my mother hadto leave Vienna, in a hurry, in 1938. My mother was very supportive of my going to college; myfather, from whom my mother was divorced, had checked out (I never saw him except at my owninstigation) and would have been happy for me to take over his button business in a second-oorwalk-up in Newark, New Jersey. Fortunately, I received a National Merit Scholarship, so I wasable to go to college. I went to Yale in part because I was led to believe it had a strong psychologydepartment.

My career as a psychologist got off to a rotten start. I took introductory psychologymy freshmanyear. I was eager still to nd out why I had done so poorly on IQ tests as a child. My rst test was aseries of short essays. I realized as I was writing them that I was not sure exactly what was expected.What I did not realize was how the writing would be scored. The teacher expected us to make10 points that he had in mind for each essay. He graded us on the number of points we made andthen averaged the scores. Just before Thanksgiving, he handed out the test papers in descendingorder. As each student got his or her paper, he or she could leave. In this way, all the 150 or sostudents in the class could see who the smart ones were and who the not-so-smart ones were. Hehanded out the 10s, the 9s, then the 8s. By the time he got to the 7s, I gured my paper must havegotten out of order: It seemed inconceivable to me that I could have gotten lower than a 7. Finallyhe handed me my paper with a 3 on it. He commented to me that there was a famous Sternbergin psychology (Saul Sternberg, mentioned again later in this article) and that it was obvious therewould not be another one. I ended up with a C in the course, which the professor referred to as agift, and decided to major in math. After failing the midterm exam in a course on real analysis,and being told by the professor to drop the course, I returned to psychology. My C in intropsych was now looking pretty good. I did much better in later courses and ended up graduatingwith highest honors in psychology. Three decades or so later I was president of the AmericanPsychological Association (APA) and commented to the psychologist who was president the year


Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


beforePhil Zimbardothat it was ironic the president of APA had gotten a C in introductorypsychology. He responded that he, too, had gotten a C.

I learned several important lessons from this experience. First, the skills one needs to succeedin introductory psychology courses are not the same as, and are only weakly overlapping with, theones needed to succeed in the eld. Second, teachers tend to teach (a) the way they were taughtand (b) the way they optimally would like to learn. But the way they teach is not always a good tto diverse students styles of learning, and unfortunately, some of the students who could be mostsuccessful in the eld may be taught in ways that never allow them to go on to career success.Third, teachers are sometimes too quick to give up on students. The ones they give up on maybe the ones who, someday, will be able to make more of a difference to the eld than the teachersthemselves.

After my freshman year, I went back to work at the Psychological Corporation. I asked for araise, but they did not want to give me one. Finally, they consented to give me a raise from $100to $105. Had they given me the raise right away, I would have been delighted. But by then I wasso pissed off at them that I decided that this summer would be my last summer there. I learned alesson from that, too, which has served me well as an administrator: Dont go out of your way toantagonize employees on whose goodwill you depend.

As a college sophomore, I did a study that showed that if you gave students taking a mental testreminders of how much of their allotted time was remaining, the psychometric properties of thetest improved relative to those for a group in which students were not given such information. Itried to get the paper published but did not succeed. So I later used it as an appendix in a bookI wrote, Writing the Psychology Paper, as an example of how to write a paper. The paper was wellwritten but somewhat vacuous. In retrospect, the lesson I learned is that it is not enough to writea paper wellyou really want to have some important message to write about. Duh.

I needed a job. The jobs available sounded boring, such as working in the dining hall or sortingrecords in a deans ofce. So I wrote to Henry (Sam) Chauncey, Jr., the director of Admissionsand Financial Aid Policy at Yale, and asked if he would meet with me to consider hiring me. Themeeting took place, and I was hired. I spentmy next few years doing part-time admissions research.

In the end, I published a couple of articles inCollege and University (Sternberg 1972, 1973) basedupon research I had done in the Yale undergraduate admissions ofce. In one piece, I showed thatYale could cut the number of applicants it carefully reviewed by 40% by employing a decisionrule, which was 98% accurate in predicting admit and reject decisions for the top and the bottomof the admissions pool. Using the rule would enable admissions ofcers to spend more time on theapplicants for whom decisions were more difcultthose in the middle of the pool. The secondarticle, a cost-benet analysis of the Yale admissions ofce interview, showed that the interviewwas pretty close to useless in the admissions decision process but was benecial because applicantsliked it and thought they performedmuch better than they actually did on it. So we kept it, if for noother reason than that it was a good public relations tool. To this day, as an administrator, I have tothink both about the substantive value of what we do in a university and its public relations value.

Inmy junior year, I took a laboratory course with a professor on human information processing.I really liked the course a lot and got an A. I had great relations with the professor, who was verysupportive of me, my work, and my ambition to pursue a career in psychology. Heres whats odd.The professor was the same one who had given me a C in the introductory course and told methere was a famous Sternberg in psychology and it looked like there wouldnt be another one.What had changed? Really, the way he taught the course. The freshman intro course was basicallya memorize-the-book, memorize-the-lectures type of course. I never have been very good at thattype of course. The junior-year course was a lab course that emphasized more creative researchwork. So I did much better. The lesson? What you learn from a student in a course you teach is

6 Sternberg

Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


not how smart the student is but rather how well the students way of learning matches the wayyou teach. Teachers should be hesitant to draw conclusions about students abilities unless theyteach to a variety of ability patterns and learning styles.

In my senior year at Yale, I worked with Endel Tulving. He was a fantastic advisor. I didsome work on what was called negative transfer in part-whole and whole-part free recall and somework on the measurement of subjective organization in free recall. The latter work resulted in anarticle with Tulving that we submitted to Psychological Bulletin. We had written a methodologicalarticle that we thought provided a novel and useful way of measuring subjective organization infree recallthat is, the extent to which the output of a free-recall task is organized rather thanrandom. The article was summarily rejected by the editor at the time, Richard Herrnstein. Forme, it was quite depressing because it was one of my earliest papers and I (presciently) foresawa career of one rejection after another. Later, in writing another paper, I asked Tulving how Ishould cite the article that had been rejected.Without skipping a beat, he said, Cite it as rejectedby Psychological Bulletin. At the time, I was stunned by his response. I was just starting my career,and I could not imagine why, at that time or, for that matter, at any time, I would want to advertisethat my paper had been rejected. I later better came to understand his messagethat we had ideasin which we took pride, and regardless of what the reviewers and editors thought, we should stilltake pride in them. The article was later published in the journal when the next editor took charge(Sternberg & Tulving 1977). Not all so many years later, I was editor of the journal!

The most important lesson I learned from Tulving is that just because a lot of people believesomething, it doesnt mean it is true (see Tulving & Madigan 1970, Tulving & Thomson 1973).

THE GRADUATE SCHOOL YEARS AT STANFORD

I arrived at Stanford for graduate school and proudly showed my new advisor, Gordon Bower,a project I had done as an undergraduate. I was very proud of the paper I had written and askedhim for comments. I gured this was a good way for him to see what a brilliant student he hadacquired. A week or two later he handed the paper back to me and merely commented that theparts he had not liked, he had crossed out. I looked at the paper and discovered he had crossedout almost the whole thing. I later concluded he was rightthe paper really wasnt very good. Hehad been kind in not just coming out and telling me that.

My rst-year project with Gordon Bower at Stanford was on negative transfer in part-wholeand whole-part free recall (Sternberg & Bower 1974). The project was based on some of my(unpublished) undergraduate research with Endel Tulving on the same topic. The project wasquite successful in one sense and not very successful in another. The success was that, after thearticle based upon the research was published, research in the area pretty much stopped. The badnews, I later learned, is that it is actually bad to close down an areathere is nothing to do in itanymore!

My main interest was not really in memory but rather in intelligence. I was still trying to gureout why I had done poorly on IQ tests. At the end of my rst year, I met Tulving at the Center forAdvanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. A group of his colleagues at theCenter joined us. Theyaskedmewhat Iwas doing inmy research. I told themaboutmy successful rst-year project but alsotold them that I was not sure what I was going to do next. I still remember their pitying looks. Theyseemed to be thinking, The poor guyhe had one idea and amed out immediately thereafter.

I thought I wanted to do something with intelligence, and with analogies in particular. Thus,when Barrons Educational Series, Inc. asked me to write a book on analogies, I accepted. I havewritten or edited over 100 books, but regrettably, my most successful book has been that one Iwrote in graduate school, How to Prepare for the Miller Analogies Test (Sternberg 1974). I wrote it


Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


partly for the money, obviously. As a graduate student, I needed that money. But I was also hopingit would give me ideas about how to study analogies.

I did end up studying analogies and intelligence for my dissertation, but the ideas did notcome from writing that book. Rather, they came from looking at materials that my wife (at thetime) was using in her work as an elementary school mathematics specialist. The materials werecalled People Pieces, and they were tiles with schematic pictures of people that varied in fourdimensionsheight (tall or short), weight (fat or thin), color (blue or red), and sex (male or female).I realized I could systematically manipulate these features and create analogies out of them. Inthis way, I could scientically study the psychological bases of reaction times in solving analogiesbased on the pieces.

The dissertation took the better part of my second and third years at Stanford, which weremy last years there. I went through the whole two years having no idea how the data would comeout. Finally, when the data all were collected, I analyzed the data and found that none of themathematical models I had proposed accounted particularly well for the data. I was chagrined.But then I studied the residuals and found that with just one slight modication of the models, theprediction of response timeswas excellent. This experience also taughtme a valuable lesson: It aintover til its over! If the data dont look right at rst, make sure that you understand and analyze thedata in the best possible way before concluding there is little or nothing there. Had I not carefullylooked at residuals of the data from the model, I would have thought the project had failed.

THE FACULTY YEARS AT YALE

My dissertation came out successfully, and after three years I left Stanford to return to Yale asan assistant professor. I submitted a book manuscript based on my long dissertation (it was over750 pages long) to Larry Erlbaum, who had just recently started Lawrence Erlbaum, Inc. He sentthe book out for review and got two reviews. One was fairly short and fairly positive. The other was17 single-spaced pages long and devastating. I gured that was the end of that. The person whowrote it was very famous in the eld and obviously did not like my take on it. To my amazement,Erlbaum told me that, despite the review, he still fully intended to publish the book. He told meto make the revisions I thought were warranted and to ignore the rest. I did, and he published thebook (Sternberg 1977), which later became a citation classic. I learned that just because work isnegatively reviewed, it is not necessarily bad.

One thing I learned early inmy career is the value of collaboration.Most ofmywrittenwork hasbeen collaborativewith graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty members, and others.I could have accomplished relatively little in my career without collaborators. I have had manynotably successful collaborations, such as with Janet Davidson, Elena Grigorenko, Linda Jarvin,JamesKaufman, ToddLubart, David Preiss, Karin Sternberg, RichardWagner,WendyWilliams,and Li-fang Zhang, among others. The list of collaborators goes on, and I would have had littlesuccess in writing without these joint efforts.

One of the weirder experiences I had during my assistant professor years was with the Journalof Experimental Psychology: General. I submitted an article on our work on response-time and error-rate models of linear syllogistic reasoning (i.e., solution of problems such as John is taller thanJames; James is taller than Joseph; who is shortest?) I got back two reviews, which were generallyquite favorable. However, one review suggested I lengthen the paper, whereas the other reviewsuggested I shorten the paper. The editor, a famous experimental psychologist, wrote back that hehad to reject the paper because one reviewer suggested I lengthen it, the other suggested I shortenit, and I obviously could not do both. Duh! He seemed unable to make the decision for himself. Iwrote a protest and he eventually accepted the paper.

8 Sternberg

Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


I have thought a great deal about the peer-review process in editorial as well as grant decisions.I once received a review of an article I wrote in which the referee suggested I nd some otherline of work more consistent with my limited level of mental abilities. My receiving this reviewreected two extraordinary events: the rst was that the referee would have written such a savageremark, and the second was that the journal editor would send the review to me.

I shrugged the review off, even nding it mildly amusing. As someone who then had beenwriting articles for 25 years, I was used to nasty ad hominem remarks. This one was worse thanmost, but probably not the absolute worst I had seen to that point (or subsequently). And I evenhave seen published critiques of my and others work where the primary goal of the critic seemedto be character assassination rather than scientic exchange. It is important, in academia, never totake things personally.

When I was an assistant professor, I received excellent advice from my mentors, advice that,in combination with my own, I have attempted to pass on to the next generation. One of the bestpieces of advice I received was from Wendell Garner, my mentor when I was a junior facultymember. He told me that, as psychologists, we ultimately are judged by the positive contributionswe make. Indeed, if one thinks of great psychologists in any eld of endeavor, they are knownprimarily not for their critiques but rather for their new and useful ideas. As a eld, we need toset better examples for our colleagues and for the next generation by exerting positive rather thannegative leadership and, most importantly, by being civil to those with whom we interact.

Very early in my career, I received a phone call inviting me to collaborate with theMinistry forthe Development of Intelligence in Venezuela on a project for developing a program to enhancethe intelligence of Venezuelan college students. The grant we received enabled us to spend severalyears developing a program that was to be administered to the college students (Sternberg 1986a).But then the party in power lost the next election, and the subsequent administration mockedand cut off the funding for these projects. The program was later published as a book (IntelligenceApplied; Sternberg 2006), now in a new edition (and published as Applied Intelligence; Sternberget al. 2008). I learned how easy it is to have ones funding cut off when the government, or acorporation, nds further funding of the work to be inconvenient.

Although most of my work has been scientic, I also have done some textbooks, some of whichdied after a few editions (e.g., Sternberg 1995), and some of which have persevered through manyeditions (e.g., Sternberg & Sternberg 2012). Writing textbooks is a different art from writingscientic articles. It is extremely hard. You need to write in a way that will engage people muchyounger and less knowledgeable than you. Moreover, there is tremendous pressure to dumb downthe materialmore so in recent years than in years further past. But if you succeed in getting acontract and producing the book, you may nd it greatly rewarding to know that students havelearned psychology from your own textbook. In my own case, textbooks were motivated partly bymy desire to produce a better textbook than what was out there, partly by my excitement aboutwriting for a student audience, and partly by my need for money to pay for my kids college. Mybetter idea was to teach psychology using principles of my theory of successful intelligence.

When an article (or bookmanuscript) is rejected, one never knows for sure whether it is becauseit is really badorbecause it is really good. I usuallywould take reviews seriously, ignoring personalcomments, and then resubmit. Sometimes, the second and then the third journal would reject thework. I would usually conclude after three go-arounds that either my ideas were not so good orthat I had not succeeded in writing about them in a way that persuaded other people that they weregood, however good or bad they might be. Sometimes I would put the article in the proverbialle drawer until I could gure out a way to present the ideas more effectively.

Once, I went through this process and got three rejections of an article. I put it away and thenforgot about it. Ten years later, I was cleaning out some le drawers and found the article. I reread


Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


it and felt, as I had ten years before, that it was a good article. I resubmitted it to a strong journal,making no changes at all. Within a few months, I got a response. The reviews were very positivebut pointed out that my citations were all at least ten years old. I updated the references, and thearticle was accepted (Sternberg 1997a).

A lot of my ideas about creativity were crystallized in our investment theory of creativity(Sternberg & Lubart 1995). It was Endel Tulving who served as a role model for the theory. Weargued that creative people are creative by virtue of an attitude toward lifethey are people whodefy the crowd. People often are afraid to defy the crowd, however, because of external pressuresto conform, which then lead them to pressure themselves to conform.

Things did not always go so well. Another article that I submitted was rejected by a couple ofjournals, and the ideas were ridiculed as nave and ill conceived. I gave up on the article. A fewyears later, the article was publishedby someone else. That is, someone else did essentially thesame research, got it published, and also got many citations to the work. In that case, I think I wasahead of the times, and when one is ahead of the times, ideas are often not appreciated.

I should add that not everything that goes into the le drawer is worth publishingever.During my rst year, I did some research in perception, which I thought showed that WendellGarners theory of perception was incorrect. I was in an awkward position, because he was a seniorfaculty member in my own department and a mentor to me. I showed him the paper, and he didnot think much of it. I submitted it, and it was rejected, but I planned to resubmit it. Then I wasinvited to give a colloquium at Bell Labs. I presented the work. In the audience was my namesake,Saul Sternberg, to whom I am not related, to my knowledge, in any way. He asked a questionabout the work, and I immediately realized that he had pointed out a fatal aw in the work: Theresults suffered from a statistical artifact, which rendered them worthless. It was one of the mostembarrassing experiences in my professional career and one from which I learned that sometimesones own condence in ones own work can be severely misplaced.

In my third year I got a phone call from a professor I knew at another institution. He asked mewhat his institutionwould have to do to recruitme to come to that institution. I told him that at Yalevery few assistant professors got tenureat the time it was about 10%and so the big issue for mewas tenure. He told me that would be no problem.We agreed to be in touch. Still a nave 28-year-old, I told the chair ofmydepartment, at the timeBillKessen, that I had received a tenure offer fromthat institution. Yale formed a committee to consider me for tenure. Things went badly downhillfrom there. I did not hear back from the other institution for a long time. In the meantime, a fullprofessor atYale left Yale to go to that other institution. I should have realized that his departure didnot bode well for me. I eventually called another professor I knew at that institution, who said that,well, I did not have a tenure offer, butmore like a 90% tenure offer.He said they would inviteme togive a talk. I told Kessen that what I had thought was a tenure offer had turned out to be only a 90%offer. He asked me to keep him informed. Eventually the other department did invite me to give atalk, and almost no one came. I went through the visit without evenmeeting the head of the depart-ment, certainly a bad sign. I never heard back from them. I eventually called the department head,who told me that I was not going to receive a tenure offer from them. I was mortied. I went backto Kessen and told him that the 90% offer was now a 0% offer. He askedme to write a letter askingthat my name be withdrawn from consideration for tenure. I felt that writing such a letter would beincredibly embarrassing. I delayed and thought and thought about how I could turn things around.I even went to interview at one other place but didnt much like it. One day, while I was jogging, Ihad an insight. There was absolutely nothing I could do to turn the situation around. I had to writethe letter. I did. I can remember few times in my life when I have been so embarrassed. I expectedmy colleagues at Yale to treatme poorly after that, but in fact theywere very kind. I was grateful andstayed. I learned that in academia, if you dont have anything in writing, you dont have anything!

10 Sternberg

Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


The next year, they did a search for the tenure slot vacated by the colleague who had left to goto the institution that never came through for me. I was now 29 years old. Yale had a xed-slottenure system. There was no actual tenure track. One could be tenured only if someone elseresigned or retired. Anyway, Yale eventually offered the slot to Bill Estes, who was 60. He wentto Harvard. So the slot was open again the following year. I became a candidate once again.

Several assistant professors were being considered at the same time for tenure at Yale. OnceI was in the ofce of one of them and noticed his calendar out on his desk. He had dinnerengagements with pretty much all the full professors in the department. I found myself thinkingthat I had really blown it. I didnt know that that was part of the deal in getting tenure. Thatcolleague was acting kind of strangely toward me. One day I went to see him and said that I hopedwe could remain friends even though we both were being considered for the same slot. He saidwe couldnt. We didnt talk a whole lot after that. I got the slot. And I learned that life is too shortto take things personally. Its not worth getting into a personal tiff over everyone with whom youcompete or have differences because that will eventually be almost everyone you know. I have hadsome colleagues who went after me in a serious way. Taking things personally is a sure way to beleft with no friends at all and to wreck ones health as well.

Wendell Garner, the next chair of the department, taught me many lessons during my yearsat Yale, one of the most important of which was the need to stand up for what one believes in.Duringmy fth year at Yale, when I was being considered again for the senior position, scuttlebuttreachedmy ears suggesting that some of the referees who had been consulted onmywork were notso positive about it because it was on intelligence, and they believed that intelligence was a ratherdumpy area of study within psychology. According to the gossip I heard, they were suggesting thatYale instead give the position to someone writing about a more prestigious eld, perhaps thinking,reasoning, or problem solving. I spoke to Garner and asked him what I should do. I somewhatbitterly pointed out that I could have done exactly the same work and called it something elsethinking, reasoning, or problem solvingand then perhaps I would not be in the pickle I was in.He staredme in the eye and said that I was right inmy concern:Mywork in the eld of intelligencemight indeed cost me my job. But if it did, I would nd another job. He pointed out that, when Ihad come to Yale, my goal had been to make a meaningful difference to the eld of intelligence.That I had done. That was mymissionmy reason for being in psychologyand so that was whatI had to do. It was a good lesson to learn early in my career. Garner also repeated to me someadvice he had once gotten from Michael Posner, who had told him that the hardest articles to getpublished are ones worst ones, because they are bad, but also ones best and most creative ones,because they threaten the existing order.

Not long thereafter, I decided to start studying love (see, e.g., Sternberg 1986b). I was in afailing relationship, so it was time again to study something I was failing at. I published a fewarticles, thinking that people would be impressed with my versatility. Instead, I started gettingcomments such as that perhaps I had run out of ideas about intelligence, or maybe I was gettingsoft in the head, or perhaps I wanted to be a TV star like Dr. Ruth (or, years later, Dr. Phil), ormaybe my love life had gone sour (which it had). I got quite a bit of ack. I learned that peopletend to put you in a box. If you start writing about something new, it makes them uncomfortable.Yet to continue to grow as a scholar, that is precisely what you need to do.

For most of my career, if someone had told me that they thought I would become a dean, Iwould have suggested he or she get his or her head examined. But after 30 years at Yale, I left. Itwas not an easy decision. But a number of factors combined to lead me to make the change at atime when many other scholars are counting the years to retirement.

First, I had been writing for 30 years and found myself feeling increasingly frustrated. I hadnever had the success with trade (popular) books that some of my colleagues had, and perhaps as


Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


a result, I felt that my writing was producing little change in the world. I had set out to reformadmissions, instruction, and assessment, none of which had happened or even looked to be closeon the horizon. Indeed, in those days of George W. Bush as president and the No Child LeftBehind Act in the schools, I felt I was further away from realizing change than I ever had beenbefore. I looked forward at perhaps 15 more years doing science and writing articles, and what Isaw depressed me. I felt that the trajectory I was on was not going to lead to any signicant changein society. Some writers succeed in changing the worldI clearly hadnt.

Second, a really important grant proposal I had written was turned down.My collaborators andI had done an assessment project that had yielded really great results. It was called the RainbowProject (Sternberg&Rainbow Proj. Collab. 2006). But the commercial outt that funded us, uponseeing the results, cut off our funding. There are various interpretations as to why they might havedone so. One is that we threatened them commercially. Another is that the work was not verygood, despite the enormous attention it received and despite its having been published as the leadarticle in the leading journal in the eld. A third was the explanation the commercial outt gaveusthat the work could never be upscaled and made to work with large numbers of participants.I had gone into psychology to make a difference to the world, and now I felt the testing companywanted to make sure I didnt make that difference. I wanted to prove that upscaling was possibleand that my ideas about admissions could make the difference to the world I hoped for.

Third, I had not much liked what I had seen in observing some of my senior colleagues duringmy years at Yale. My feeling about an academic career was that one spends the rst 20 or 30 yearstrying to claw to the top or wherever one can get, and then after that, one tries desperately tohang on to whatever position one has obtained, only practically inevitably to feel one letting go,nger by nger, of the precipice on which one is hanging. I thought that by becoming a dean andremaining at the same time a professor, I might be able to start on a new trajectory, metaphoricallyclimbing a new mountain.

Finally, in 2003 I served as president of the APA. I had been reluctant to run because I neversaw myself as much of a big-time leader or even candidate for a basically political position. ButI thought I had a missionto unify psychology (Sternberg 2004b)and the presidency of APAseemed to be the way to achieve that mission. When I ran, I initially was able to endure doingsomething I thought I stank atrunning a campaignby imagining I was only playacting being acandidate. Eventually I became the candidate whose role I playacted and forgot I was playacting.My experience as APA president convinced me I could do administration and, to my surprise, Ireally liked it.

One would like to say that, as the years go on, ones career gets easier. I think this is partiallyright. In my experience, the trajectory is curvilinear, as I imply above. At rst, one is on a risingtrajectory. But as the eld moves on, it is difcult to change oneself as quickly as the eld changes.I had noticed this earlier in my careersome people got stuck and seemed not to be able to changewith the world. Earlier on, I had noticed this in others. As the years went by, I noticed it in myself.

I had early on developed a three-part theory of intelligence, and then a three-part theory oflove, and then a three-part theory of creativity. At that point, I had three theories with three parts.People began to ask me why three of my theories had three parts. I thought about the questiondeeply, not to mention profoundly, and answered that I could think of three reasons my theorieshad three parts. I was stuck. The theory of leadership that I have developed is called WICS,which stands for wisdom, intelligence, and creativity, synthesized. I have graduated to a four-parttheory!sort of.

So I think things get a little easier and then get a lot harder later in a career. It is a constantchallenge to renew oneself and not allow oneself to get stale. The rejections dont stop in oneslater yearsat least, they have not for me. I have probably had more articles rejected than anyone

12 Sternberg

Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


I know, although almost all of them were eventually published.What has changed is the thicknessof my skin: I have grown used to rejections and take them much more lightly than I did when Iwas younger.

THE DEANSHIP YEARS AT TUFTS

Becoming a dean is undoubtedly not the right thing for everyone, but it was the right thing forme. My research operation has been smaller, and I have been publishing less, but it is still morethan most academics publish. Moreover, the nature of my writing has changed to some extent.I have become much more concerned with writing about issues as they pertain to colleges anduniversities, in general. It has been a chance for me to apply the concepts about which I wrotebefore to a larger academic context (e.g., Sternberg 2010a).

I encountered one major challenge as a dean that I had not encountered before. When I wouldwrite anything pertaining to the university, I had to be super careful about what I said. As aprofessor, you can tell any story you want about what you do, so long as it is veridical. In contrast,administrators cant all be telling different stories about their university. They need a more or lesscommon story. At Tufts, the president wanted very much to control the message. I chafed at this,but it was his prerogative to control that message.

At Tufts, we instituted the Kaleidoscope Project (Sternberg 2010b), which was an upscalingof the Rainbow Project. We measured creative, analytical, practical, and wisdom-based skills inour applicants who chose to participate, roughly one-third of them. The results were excellent:We improved prediction of academic and extracurricular performance over SAT and high schoolgrade point average. And I showed that it was indeed possible to upscale the Rainbow Project wedid at Yale.

THE PROVOSTSHIP YEARS AT OKLAHOMA STATE

Tufts was not quite the right place for me. In the end of my term at Yale, I had begun to feel thatthe place was a bit elitist as well as elite, and I had gone to Tufts hoping that it would be different.It was different, but not really in that way. There is nothing wrong with being elitist, I suppose,but it was not a good t to a guy who was a rst-generation high school graduate whose researchhad always been about the breadth and modiability of abilities and about access. It almost felt asthough the underpinnings of the universities I had been at were at odds with my core beliefs inmy research and my life.

Oklahoma State is a land-grant university that emphasizes access, service to the state and thenation, and the development of ethical leaders who make a positive, meaningful, and enduringdifference to the world. I had a wonderful time during my three years as a provost at OklahomaState. I also published like a madman, but in different outlets from those to which I had beenaccustomed. Now I was publishingmostly in higher-ed periodicals, andmostly about my thoughtson education [e.g., Sternberg (2010b) on the land-grant mission; Sternberg (2012b) on how ourmeritocracy has become fractured through the way we admit students].

At Oklahoma State, we instituted an admissions project, Panorama, that was an expansion ofthe project on admissions, Kaleidoscope, we had done at Tufts. We once again found it to behighly successful in selecting students for admission who were not only analytically smart but alsocreatively and practically smart and wise.

The greatest lesson I learned at Oklahoma State was how differently diverse constituencies seethe role a university should play in society. Professors often tend to take their views as denitive, but


Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


I was working with the legislature, major donors, alumni, students, businesses, and others besideprofessors, and all had vastly different conceptions of what we as a university ought to be doing.

THE PRESIDENCY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING

I reached age 62 and realized that if I ever were to be a university president, my time was runningout. And I really wanted to apply my ideas about psychology applied to education in an entireuniversity setting. So I became a candidate in a few searches, but the place to which my wifeand I really wanted to go, without question, was the University of Wyoming. I loved its being aland-grant institution committed to excellence, and Karin loved that it is situated in the RockyMountains. Both of us thought Laramie,Wyoming, would be a great place to raise what now weretwo-year-old triplets. Ive just arrived and so far our expectations are more than met. We loveit here! And it is indeed a chance to apply my ideas about education. What I probably had notrealized, however, is how intensely political the context is in which a public university presidentoperates. Almost as much so as the presidency of APA.

If there is one thing I have learned in administration, it is never to cover up a universitysscrewups, or ones personal ones either. In the course of ones career, one will make mistakes,some of them serious. The temptation is to cover them up. The problem is that then one hastwo issues to deal withthe initial screwup and then the cover-up. And my experience is that thecareer killer is almost never the initial mistakeits the cover-up.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I believe the issue of t is important not just for administrators but also for all scholars (Sternberg2004a). Yale was a great t for me in the 30 years I was there. Had I been in another institution, Imight not equally have ourished. But I also saw scholars, especially junior faculty, ground downby a system that was highly competitive, that dismissed most of its junior faculty, and that requiredvery high visibility and impact nationally and internationally. It was a great t for me for 30 years,but then it wasnt. It was time to move on. It is hugely important that one nd a job where thekind of science one does and the kinds of writing one does are valued. I needed to be in a placethat shared my view that the purpose of higher education is to produce ethical leaders who willmake the world a better place (Sternberg 2013).

One can help nd t by nding great mentors. In this regard, I have been very lucky. EndelTulving at Yale taught me the importance of defying the crowdof being willing to take contrar-ian positions, even though writing about them would inspire conict and sometimes animosity.Gordon Bower at Stanford taught me the importance of having an audience and of writing ap-propriately for different audiences. Wendell Garner taught me the value of integrity in all I did.As a dean, Jamshed Bharucha, our provost, taught me the importance of seeing things from per-spectives that seem strange and often just plain wrong. As a provost, Burns Hargis, our president,taught me how to operate an academic institution in a political context. Ones writing will be farmore insightful and just plain wise if one can ndmentors who broaden and deepen ones thinkingabout the issues on which one writes.

Onenalwarning:When Iwas young, Iwanted to be likemymentorsEndelTulving,GordonBower, andWendell Garner. All were internationally famous experimental psychologists, all wereelected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences, and all won practically every awardthere was to win. As the years went by, I felt like I was falling further and further behind on theirpath. I became more and more despondent. Eventually, though, I realized that I had not exactlyfallen behind on their path; rather, I had taken a different path.We are successfully intelligent to

14 Sternberg

Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


the extent we optimize becoming the person we can be. None of us can be someone else. Find yourowndreams and realize them; dont settle for someone elses, nomatter how appealing theymay be.

When I was younger, I admired the people who wrote until they dropped. I rememberedB. F. Skinner giving a talk at APA, writing an article based on it, and then dropping dead. Ithought this was just the greatest thing. Now I see things differently. I wonder if they could notnd anything else in their later years that made life worth living. I believe I have, and when thetime comes, I will look forward to other challenges and opportunities to renew myself. I hopeto write for a long time, but not until I drop dead. Ive got other things I hope to do, and theyawait me down the line. And I have learned that if you want to be immortal, dont count on yourwork to achieve immortality (Sternberg 2012a). For the most part, psychologists work, and thepsychologists themselves, start to be forgotten no later than the day they announce they are goingto retire. For me, my immortality is throughmy beloved wife and ve children, and their children,and the children the generation thereafter. Thats good enough for memore than good enough!

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The author is not aware of any afliations, memberships, funding, or nancial holdings that mightbe perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

LITERATURE CITED

Rosenthal R, Jacobson L. 1968. Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils Intellectual Develop-ment. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston

Spearman C. 1927. The Abilities of Man. New York: MacmillanSternberg RJ. 1972. A decision rule to facilitate the undergraduate admissions process. Coll. Univ. 48:4853Sternberg RJ. 1973. Cost-benet analysis of the Yale admissions ofce interview. Coll. Univ. 48:15464Sternberg RJ. 1974. How to Prepare for the Miller Analogies Test. Woodbury, NY: Barrons Educ. Ser.Sternberg RJ. 1977. Intelligence, Information Processing, and Analogical Reasoning: The Componential Analysis of

Human Abilities. Hillsdale, NJ: ErlbaumSternberg RJ. 1985. Beyond IQ: A Triarchic Theory of Human Intelligence. New York: Cambridge Univ. PressSternberg RJ. 1986a. Intelligence Applied: Understanding and Increasing Your Intellectual Skills. San Diego, CA:

Harcourt Brace JovanovichSternberg RJ. 1986b. A triangular theory of love. Psychol. Rev. 93:11935Sternberg RJ. 1990. Metaphors of Mind. New York: Cambridge Univ. PressSternberg RJ. 1995. In Search of the Human Mind. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Coll. Publ.Sternberg RJ. 1997a. Construct validation of a triangular love scale. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 27(3):31335Sternberg RJ. 1997b. Successful Intelligence. New York: PlumeSternberg RJ. 1997c. Thinking Styles. New York: Cambridge Univ. PressSternberg RJ. 1998a. Cupids Arrow. New York: Cambridge Univ. PressSternberg RJ. 1998b. Love Is a Story. New York: Oxford Univ. PressSternberg RJ. 2003. Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized. New York: Cambridge Univ. PressSternberg RJ. 2004a. Psychology 1011/2: The Unspoken Rules for Success in Academia. Washington, DC: Am.

Psychol. Assoc.Sternberg RJ. 2004b. Unifying the eld of psychology. In Unity in Psychology: Possibility or Pipedream?, ed.

RJ Sternberg, pp. 314. Washington, DC: Am. Psychol. Assoc.Sternberg RJ. 2006. Intelligence Applied. San Diego, CA: AcademicSternberg RJ. 2010a. College Admissions for the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. PressSternberg RJ. 2010b. Dening a great university. Inside High. Ed. http://www.insidehighered.com/views/

2010/11/29/sternbergSternberg RJ. 2012a. Becoming immortal: genes, memes, and dreams. Psychologist 25(9):68889


Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


Sternberg RJ. 2012b. Our fractured meritocracy. Chron. High. Educ. Dec. 12. http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2012/12/12/our-fractured-meritocracy/

Sternberg RJ. 2013. Character development: putting it into practice in admissions and instruction. J. Coll.Charact. 14(3):25358

Sternberg RJ, Bower GH. 1974. Transfer in part-whole and whole-part free recall: a comparative evaluationof theories. J. Verbal Learn. Verbal Behav. 13:126

Sternberg RJ, Forsythe GB, Hedlund J, Horvath J, Snook S, et al. 2000. Practical Intelligence in Everyday Life.New York: Cambridge Univ. Press

Sternberg RJ, Jarvin L, Grigorenko EL. 2011. Explorations of the Nature of Giftedness. New York: CambridgeUniv. Press

Sternberg RJ, Kaufman JC, Grigorenko EL. 2008. Applied Intelligence. New York: Cambridge Univ. PressSternberg RJ, Lubart TI. 1995. Defying the Crowd: Cultivating Creativity in a Culture of Conformity. New York:

Free PressSternberg RJ, Rainbow Proj. Collab. 2006. The Rainbow Project: enhancing the SAT through assessments

of analytical, practical and creative skills. Intelligence 34(4):32150Sternberg RJ, Sternberg K. 2012. Cognitive Psychology. Belmont, CA: Cengage. 6th ed.Sternberg RJ, Tulving E. 1977. The measurement of subjective organization in free recall. Psychol. Bull.

84:53956Tulving E, Madigan SA. 1970. Memory and verbal learning. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 21:43784Tulving E, Thomson D. 1973. Encoding specicity and retrieval processes in episodic memory. Psychol. Rev.

80:35273

16 Sternberg

Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


Annual Review ofPsychology

Volume 65, 2014

ContentsPrefatory

I Study What I Stink At: Lessons Learned from a Career in PsychologyRobert J. Sternberg 1

Stress and Neuroendocrinology

Oxytocin Pathways and the Evolution of Human BehaviorC. Sue Carter 17

Genetics of Behavior

Gene-Environment InteractionStephen B. Manuck and Jeanne M. McCaffery 41

Cognitive Neuroscience

The Cognitive Neuroscience of InsightJohn Kounios and Mark Beeman 71

Color Perception

Color Psychology: Effects of Perceiving Color on PsychologicalFunctioning in HumansAndrew J. Elliot and Markus A. Maier 95

Infancy

Human Infancy. . . and the Rest of the LifespanMarc H. Bornstein 121

Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood

Bullying in Schools: The Power of Bullies and the Plight of VictimsJaana Juvonen and Sandra Graham 159

Is Adolescence a Sensitive Period for Sociocultural Processing?Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Kathryn L. Mills 187

Adulthood and Aging

Psychological Research on RetirementMo Wang and Junqi Shi 209

Development in the Family

Adoption: Biological and Social Processes Linked to AdaptationHarold D. Grotevant and Jennifer M. McDermott 235

vi

Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


Individual Treatment

Combination Psychotherapy and Antidepressant Medication Treatmentfor Depression: For Whom, When, and HowW. Edward Craighead and Boadie W. Dunlop 267

Adult Clinical Neuropsychology

Sport and Nonsport Etiologies of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury:Similarities and DifferencesAmanda R. Rabinowitz, Xiaoqi Li, and Harvey S. Levin 301

Self and Identity

The Psychology of Change: Self-Afrmation and SocialPsychological InterventionGeoffrey L. Cohen and David K. Sherman 333

Gender

Gender Similarities and DifferencesJanet Shibley Hyde 373

Altruism and Aggression

Dehumanization and InfrahumanizationNick Haslam and Steve Loughnan 399

The Sociocultural Appraisals, Values, and Emotions (SAVE) Frameworkof Prosociality: Core Processes from Gene to MemeDacher Keltner, Aleksandr Kogan, Paul K. Piff, and Sarina R. Saturn 425

Small Groups

Deviance and Dissent in GroupsJolanda Jetten and Matthew J. Hornsey 461

Social Neuroscience

Cultural Neuroscience: Biology of the Mind in Cultural ContextsHeejung S. Kim and Joni Y. Sasaki 487

Genes and Personality

A Phenotypic Null Hypothesis for the Genetics of PersonalityEric Turkheimer, Erik Pettersson, and Erin E. Horn 515

Environmental Psychology

Environmental Psychology MattersRobert Gifford 541

Contents vii

Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.


Community Psychology

Socioecological PsychologyShigehiro Oishi 581

Subcultures Within Countries

Social Class Culture Cycles: How Three Gateway Contexts Shape Selvesand Fuel InequalityNicole M. Stephens Hazel Rose Markus, and L. Taylor Phillips 611

Organizational Climate/Culture

(Un)Ethical Behavior in OrganizationsLinda Klebe Trevino, Niki A. den Nieuwenboer, and Jennifer J. Kish-Gephart 635

Job/Work Design

Beyond Motivation: Job and Work Design for Development, Health,Ambidexterity, and MoreSharon K. Parker 661

Selection and Placement

A Century of SelectionAnn Marie Ryan and Robert E. Ployhart 693

Personality and Coping Styles

Personality, Well-Being, and HealthHoward S. Friedman and Margaret L. Kern 719

Timely Topics

Properties of the Internal Clock: First- and Second-Order Principles ofSubjective TimeMelissa J. Allman, Sundeep Teki, Timothy D. Grifths, and Warren H. Meck 743

Indexes

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 5565 773

Cumulative Index of Article Titles, Volumes 5565 778

ErrataAn online log of corrections to Annual Review of Psychology articles may be found athttp://psych.AnnualReviews.org/errata.shtml

viii Contents

Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.

ANNUAL REVIEWSConnect With Our Experts

ANNUAL REVIEWS | Connect With Our ExpertsTel: 800.523.8635 (us/can) | Tel: 650.493.4400 | Fax: 650.424.0910 | Email: [email protected]

New From Annual Reviews:Annual Review of Vision ScienceVolume 1 September 2015 http://vision.annualreviews.org

Co-Editors: J. Anthony Movshon, New York University and Brian A. Wandell, Stanford UniversityThe Annual Review of Vision Science reviews progress in the visual sciences, a cross-cutting set of disciplines that intersect psychology, neuroscience, computer science, cell biology and genetics, and clinical medicine. The journal covers a broad range of topics and techniques, including optics, retina, central visual processing, visual perception, eye movements, visual development, vision models, computer vision, and the mechanisms of visual disease, dysfunction, and sight restoration. The study of vision is central to progress in many areas of science, and this new journal will explore and expose the connections that link it to biology, behavior, computation, engineering, and medicine.

TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR VOLUME 1: 3D Displays, Martin S. Banks, Davind M. Hoffman,

Joohwan Kim, Gordon Wetzstein Adaptive Optics Ophthalmoscopy, Austin Roorda,

Jacque L. Duncan Angiogenesis in Eye Disease, Yoshihiko Usui,

Peter D. Westenskow, Salome Murinello, Michael I. Dorrell, Leah Scheppke, Felicitas Bucher, Susumu Sakimoto, Liliana P Paris, Edith Aguilar, Martin Friedlander

Color Vision and the Cone Mosaic, David H. Brainard Control and Functions of Fixational Eye Movements,

Michele Rucci, Martina Poletti Development of 3D Perception in Human Infants,

Anthony M. Norcia, Holly E. Gerhard fMRI Decoding and Reconstruction in Vision,

Nikolaus Kriegeskorte Functional Circuitry of the Retina, Jonathan B. Demb,

Joshua H. Singer Image Formation in the Living Human Eye, Pablo Artal Imaging Glaucoma, Donald C. Hood Mitochondria and Optic Neuropathy, Janey L. Wiggs Neuronal Mechanisms of Visual Attention, John Maunsell Optogenetic Approaches to Restoring Vision, Zhuo-Hua Pan,

Qi Lu, Alexander M. Dizhoor, Gary W. Abrams

Organization of the Central Visual Pathways Following Field Defects Arising from Congenital, Inherited, and Acquired Eye Disease, Antony B. Morland

Retinal Ganglion Cell and Subcortical Contributions to Visual Feature-Selectivity, Onkar S. Dhande, Benjamin K. Stafford, Jung-Hwan A. Lim, Andrew D. Huberman

Ribbon Synapses and Visual Processing in the Retina, Leon Lagnado, Frank Schmitz

The Determination of Rod and Cone Photoreceptor Fate, Constance L. Cepko

The Role of Face-Selective Areas in Face Perception: An Updated Neural Framework, Brad Duchaine, Galit Yovel

Visual Adaptation, Michael A. Webster Visual Functions of the Thalamus, W. Martin Usrey,

Henry J. Alitto Visual Guidance of Smooth Pursuit Eye Movements,

Stephen Lisberger Visual Memory, George A. Alvarez Visuomotor Functions in the Frontal Lobe, Jeffrey D. Schall What Does Genetics Tell Us About AMD? Felix Grassmann,

Thomas Ach, Caroline Brandl, Iris Heid, Bernhard H.F. Weber Zebrafish Models of Retinal Disease, Brian A. Link,

Ross F. Collery

Access all Annual Reviews journals via your institution at www.annualreviews.org.

Complimentary online access to Volume 1 will be available until September 2016.

Ann

u. R

ev. P

sych

ol. 2

014.

65:1

-16.

Dow

nloa

ded

from

ww

w.an

nual

revi

ews.o

rg A

cces

s pro

vide

d by

36.

81.7

9.10

9 on

06/

30/1

5. F

or p

erso

nal u

se o

nly.

Annual Reviews OnlineSearch Annual ReviewsAnnual Review of PsychologyOnlineMost Downloaded Psychology Reviews Most Cited Psychology Reviews Annual Review of Psychology Errata View Current Editorial Committee

All Articles in the Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 65I Study What I Stink At: Lessons Learned from a Career in PsychologyOxytocin Pathways and the Evolution of Human BehaviorGene-Environment InteractionThe Cognitive Neuroscience of InsightColor Psychology: Effects of Perceiving Color on Psychological Functioning in HumansHuman Infancy. . . and the Rest of the LifespanBullying in Schools: The Power of Bullies and the Plight of VictimsIs Adolescence a Sensitive Period for Sociocultural Processing?Psychological Research on RetirementAdoption: Biological and Social Processes Linked to AdaptationCombination Psychotherapy and Antidepressant Medication Treatment for Depression: For Whom, When, and HowSport and Nonsport Etiologies of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury:Similarities and DifferencesThe Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and SocialPsychological InterventionGender Similarities and DifferencesDehumanization and InfrahumanizationThe Sociocultural Appraisals, Values, and Emotions (SAVE) Frameworkof Prosociality: Core Processes from Gene to MemeDeviance and Dissent in GroupsCultural Neuroscience: Biology of the Mind in Cultural ContextsA Phenotypic Null Hypothesis for the Genetics of PersonalityEnvironmental Psychology MattersSocioecological PsychologySocial Class Culture Cycles: How Three Gateway Contexts Shape Selvesand Fuel Inequality(Un)Ethical Behavior in OrganizationsBeyond Motivation: Job and Work Design for Development, Health, Ambidexterity, and MoreA Century of SelectionPersonality, Well-Being, and HealthProperties of the Internal Clock: First- and Second-Order Principles of Subjective Time

ar: logo:

Documents

annurev-psych-052913-074851