Kipling D. Williams is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. [1] He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Ohio State University. He is most noted for his research on ostracism and has developed unique methods to study the processes and consequences.
Williams has conducted research in several areas, including aggression, group processes and close relationships. However, he has specific research topics that include ostracism, social loafing and social compensation, internet research, stealing thunder, which is a specific tactic used to deflate any negative impact of changing a person's testimony, law and psychology.
Williams has a primary interest in social influence. In addition, he has contributed to publications in both the field of psychology and in the field of law, which deal with issues of different realms of social influence. Some of these realms of social influence concern eyewitness memory and testimony, biasing judges’ instructions, and most recently, on influencing jurors to scrutinize confidence inflation in court cases. However, Williams’ interests mostly include group processes and social influence. While some people regard this as simple group research, he regards it as a phenomenon of very basic social influence. He believes that an individual's emotions, subsequent social susceptibility, and motivations are all impacted when that person is ostracized.
Williams believes that “social influence is of great importance to his self-definition and to his interest in social psychology.” [2] Simply put, he believes that “the heart of social psychology is social influence.” [2]
He was an associate editor of both the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice. He is currently the editor of Social Influence.
He has a free downloadable program called “Cyberball,” which can be used in research to study issues that surround ostracism. Dr. Williams has contributed to different psychological articles and he has also written several different books related to his psychological interests.
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the relationship between mental states and social situations, studying the social conditions under which thoughts, feelings, and behaviors occur, and how these variables influence social interactions.
Aggression is hostile and antagonistic behavior, often with the intent to cause harm, although it can be channeled into creative and practical outlets for some. It may occur either reactively or without provocation. In humans, aggression can be caused by various triggers. For example, built-up frustration due to blocked goals or perceived disrespect. Human aggression can be classified into direct and indirect aggression; whilst the former is characterized by physical or verbal behavior intended to cause harm to someone, the latter is characterized by behavior intended to harm the social relations of an individual or group.
Leon Festinger was an American social psychologist who originated the theory of cognitive dissonance and social comparison theory. The rejection of the previously dominant behaviorist view of social psychology by demonstrating the inadequacy of stimulus-response conditioning accounts of human behavior is largely attributed to his theories and research. Festinger is also credited with advancing the use of laboratory experimentation in social psychology, although he simultaneously stressed the importance of studying real-life situations, a principle he practiced when personally infiltrating a doomsday cult. He is also known in social network theory for the proximity effect.
Applied psychology is the use of psychological methods and findings of scientific psychology to solve practical problems of human and animal behavior and experience. Educational and organizational psychology, business management, law, health, product design, ergonomics, behavioural psychology, psychology of motivation, psychoanalysis, neuropsychology, psychiatry and mental health are just a few of the areas that have been influenced by the application of psychological principles and scientific findings. Some of the areas of applied psychology include counseling psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, engineering psychology, occupational health psychology, legal psychology, school psychology, sports psychology, community psychology, neuropsychology, medical psychology and clinical psychology, evolutionary psychology, human factors, forensic psychology and traffic psychology. In addition, a number of specialized areas in the general area of psychology have applied branches. However, the lines between sub-branch specializations and major applied psychology categories are often mixed or in some cases blurred. For example, a human factors psychologist might use a cognitive psychology theory. This could be described as human factor psychology or as applied cognitive psychology. When applied psychology is used in the treatment of behavioral disorders there are many experimental approaches to try and treat an individual. This type of psychology can be found in many of the subbranches in other fields of psychology.
Silent treatment is the refusal to communicate verbally and electronically with someone who is trying to communicate and elicit a response. It may range from just sulking to malevolent abusive controlling behaviour. It may be a passive-aggressive form of emotional abuse in which displeasure, disapproval and contempt is exhibited through nonverbal gestures while maintaining verbal silence. Clinical psychologist Harriet Braiker identifies it as a form of manipulative punishment. It may be used as a form of social rejection; according to the social psychologist Kipling Williams, it is the most common form of ostracism.
Together, legal psychology and forensic psychology form the field more generally recognized as "psychology and law". Following earlier efforts by psychologists to address legal issues, psychology and law became a field of study in the 1960s as part of an effort to enhance justice, though that originating concern has lessened over time. The multidisciplinary American Psychological Association's Division 41, the American Psychology–Law Society, is active with the goal of promoting the contributions of psychology to the understanding of law and legal systems through research, as well as providing education to psychologists in legal issues and providing education to legal personnel on psychological issues. Further, its mandate is to inform the psychological and legal communities and the public at large of current research, educational, and service in the area of psychology and law. There are similar societies in Britain and Europe.
Sex differences in psychology are differences in the mental functions and behaviors of the sexes and are due to a complex interplay of biological, developmental, and cultural factors. Differences have been found in a variety of fields such as mental health, cognitive abilities, personality, emotion, sexuality, and tendency towards aggression. Such variation may be innate, learned, or both. Modern research attempts to distinguish between these causes and to analyze any ethical concerns raised. Since behavior is a result of interactions between nature and nurture, researchers are interested in investigating how biology and environment interact to produce such differences, although this is often not possible.
Relational aggression, alternative aggression, or relational bullying is a type of aggression in which harm is caused by damaging someone's relationships or social status.
Cultural psychology is the study of how cultures reflect and shape their members' psychological processes.
Social rejection occurs when an individual is deliberately excluded from a social relationship or social interaction. The topic includes interpersonal rejection, romantic rejection, and familial estrangement. A person can be rejected or shunned by individuals or an entire group of people. Furthermore, rejection can be either active by bullying, teasing, or ridiculing, or passive by ignoring a person, or giving the "silent treatment". The experience of being rejected is subjective for the recipient, and it can be perceived when it is not actually present. The word "ostracism" is also commonly used to denote a process of social exclusion.
Miles Ronald Cole Hewstone is a British social psychologist who is well known for his work on social relations.
Cross-cultural psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes, including both their variability and invariance, under diverse cultural conditions. Through expanding research methodologies to recognize cultural variance in behavior, language, and meaning it seeks to extend and develop psychology. Since psychology as an academic discipline was developed largely in North America and Europe, some psychologists became concerned that constructs and phenomena accepted as universal were not as invariant as previously assumed, especially since many attempts to replicate notable experiments in other cultures had varying success. Since there are questions as to whether theories dealing with central themes, such as affect, cognition, conceptions of the self, and issues such as psychopathology, anxiety, and depression, may lack external validity when "exported" to other cultural contexts, cross-cultural psychology re-examines them using methodologies designed to factor in cultural differences so as to account for cultural variance. Some critics have pointed to methodological flaws in cross-cultural psychological research, and claim that serious shortcomings in the theoretical and methodological bases used impede, rather than help the scientific search for universal principles in psychology. Cross-cultural psychologists are turning more to the study of how differences (variance) occur, rather than searching for universals in the style of physics or chemistry.
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.
Leonard William Doob was an American academic who worked as the Sterling Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University and was a pioneering figure in the fields of cognitive and social psychology, propaganda and communication studies, as well as conflict resolution. He served as director of overseas intelligence for the United States Office of War Information in World War II and also wrote several works intersecting cognition, psychology and philosophy.
The frustration–aggression hypothesis, also known as the frustration–aggression–displacement theory, is a theory of aggression proposed by John Dollard, Neal Miller, Leonard Doob, Orval Mowrer, and Robert Sears in 1939, and further developed by Neal Miller in 1941 and Leonard Berkowitz in 1969. The theory says that aggression is the result of blocking, or frustrating, a person's efforts to attain a goal.
Joseph Paul Forgas is an Australian social psychologist, currently Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He was born in Budapest, Hungary and emigrated to Australia at the age of 22. He is married with two children, and lives in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs.
Arie W. Kruglanski is a social psychologist known for his work on goal systems, regulatory mode, and cognitive closure. He is currently a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Vladimir J. Konečni is an American and Serbian psychologist, aesthetician, poet, dramatist, fiction writer, and art photographer, currently an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego.