Howard Giles (born December 22, 1946) is a British-American social psychologist and a Distinguished Research Professor of Communication at the Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara.
He was the chair of the department from 1991 to 1998, and has been president of both the International Communication Association and the International Association for the Study of Language and Social Psychology. [1] He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Language and Social Psychology [2] and the Journal of Asian Pacific Communication , [1] [3] and was the editor of Human Communication Research from 1992 to 1995. [1] He has received the Spearman Award and the President's Award from the British Psychological Society, and has also received the Mark L. Knapp Award from the National Communication Association. [1] He is known for developing communication accommodation theory, [4] and has diverse research interests in the areas of applied intergroup communication research and theory. [5]
Giles was born in Cardiff, Wales. He earned his B.A. in psychology from Bangor University and his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Bristol.
Group dynamics is a system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group, or between social groups. The study of group dynamics can be useful in understanding decision-making behaviour, tracking the spread of diseases in society, creating effective therapy techniques, and following the emergence and popularity of new ideas and technologies. These applications of the field are studied in psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, epidemiology, education, social work, leadership studies, business and managerial studies, as well as communication studies.
The University of California, Santa Barbara is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the University of California 10-university system. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an independent teachers' college, UCSB joined the University of California system in 1944, and is the third-oldest undergraduate campus in the system, after UC Berkeley and UCLA.
Acculturation is a process of social, psychological, and cultural change that stems from the balancing of two cultures while adapting to the prevailing culture of the society. Acculturation is a process in which an individual adopts, acquires and adjusts to a new cultural environment as a result of being placed into a new culture, or when another culture is brought to someone. Individuals of a differing culture try to incorporate themselves into the new more prevalent culture by participating in aspects of the more prevalent culture, such as their traditions, but still hold onto their original cultural values and traditions. The effects of acculturation can be seen at multiple levels in both the devotee of the prevailing culture and those who are assimilating into the culture.
National identity is a person's identity or sense of belonging to one or more states or to one or more nations. It is the sense of "a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language". National identity may refer to the subjective feeling one shares with a group of people about a nation, regardless of one's legal citizenship status. National identity is viewed in psychological terms as "an awareness of difference", a "feeling and recognition of 'we' and 'they'". National identity also includes the general population and diaspora of multi-ethnic states and societies that have a shared sense of common identity identical to that of a nation while being made up of several component ethnic groups. Hyphenated ethnicities are an example of the confluence of multiple ethnic and national identities within a single person or entity.
Communication accommodation theory (CAT) is a theory of communication developed by Howard Giles. This theory concerns "(1) the behavioral changes that people make to attune their communication to their partner, (2) the extent to which people perceive their partner as appropriately attuning to them." The basis of the theory lies in the idea that people adjust their style of speech to one another. Doing this helps the message sender gain approval from the receiver, increases efficiency in communication between both parties, and helps the sender maintain a positive social identity. This theory is concerned with the links between language, context, and identity. It focuses on both the intergroup and interpersonal factors that lead to accommodation, as well as the ways that power, macro and micro-context concerns affect communication behaviors. Accommodation is usually considered to be between the message sender and the message receiver, but the communicator also often accommodates to a larger audience – either a group of people that are watching the interaction or society in general.
Henri Tajfel was a Polish social psychologist, best known for his pioneering work on the cognitive aspects of prejudice and social identity theory, as well as being one of the founders of the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology.
Mary Bucholtz is professor of linguistics at UC Santa Barbara. Bucholtz's work focuses largely on language use in the United States, and specifically on issues of language and youth; language, gender, and sexuality; African American English; and Mexican and Chicano Spanish.
Personality and Social Psychology Review is a journal published by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). It publishes review and meta analytic articles on subjects like social cognition, attitudes, group processes, social influence, intergroup relations, self and identity, nonverbal communication, and social psychological aspects of affect and emotion, and of language and discourse. The current editors of the journal are Heejung Kim and David Sherman. This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Michael A. Hogg is a British psychologist, and Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Claremont Graduate University in Los Angeles. He is also an honorary Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Kent in the UK.
An ethnolinguistic group is a group that is unified by both a common ethnicity and language. Most ethnic groups share a first language. However, "ethnolinguistic" is often used to emphasise that language is a major basis for the ethnic group, especially in regard to its neighbours.
Anthony R. Pratkanis is a researcher, author, consultant, media commentator and a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of several books, and has published research papers in scientific journals on the topics of social influence, fraud, terrorist and dictator propaganda, marketing and consumer behavior, and subliminal persuasion.
Wendy Berry Mendes is the Sarlo/Ekman Professor of Emotion at University of California, San Francisco, United States. She was previously the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard University. Her expertise is in the area of emotion, intergroup relationships, stigma and psychophysiology. At UCSF she is the founder and director of the Emotion, Health, and Psychophysiology Lab in the Department of Psychiatry.
Amélie Mummendey was a German social psychologist. From 2007 until her death, she was a Vice-Rector for the Graduate Academy at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
Journal of Language and Social Psychology is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes papers in the fields of Communication and Psychology. The journal's editor is Howard Giles. It has been in publication since 1982 and is currently published by SAGE Publications.
Fathali M. Moghaddam is an Iranian-born psychologist, author, professor of psychology at Georgetown University and director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science (ICOS), Department of Government, Georgetown University.
Peace psychology is a subfield of psychology and peace research that deals with the psychological aspects of peace, conflict, violence, and war. Peace psychology can be characterized by four interconnected pillars: (1) research, (2) education, (3) practice, and (4) advocacy. The first pillar, research, is documented most extensively in this article.
Diane M. Mackie is a social psychologist known for her research in the fields of intergroup relations and social influence. She is Professor Emerita of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Brenda Nelle Major is an American social psychologist and distinguished professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she heads the Self and Social Identity Lab.
Intergroup relations refers to interactions between individuals in different social groups, and to interactions taking place between the groups themselves collectively. It has long been a subject of research in social psychology, political psychology, and organizational behavior.
Amado M. Padilla is an educator known for his research on academic resiliency, acculturation and related stress, second language learning and bilingualism. Padilla is Professor of Psychological Studies in Education and Associate Dean at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.