Social Psychology

Robert A. Baron is Wellington Professor of Management and Psychology at Rensselaer RPI. He received his PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Iowa (1968). Prof. Baron has held faculty appointments at Purdue, the Universities of Minnesota, Texas, South Carolina, Washington, Princeton University, and Oxford University. From 1979-1981 he served as Program Director for Social and Developmental Psychology at NSF. In 2001he was appointed as a Visiting Senior Research Fellow by the French Ministry of Research (Universite de Toulouse). Baron is a Fellow of APA and a Charter Fellow of APS. He has published more than one hundred articles and forty chapters, and is the author of 48 books in management and psychology. He holds three U.S. patents and was founder and CEO of IEP, Inc. (1993-2000). His current research interests focus on social and cognitive factors in entrepreneurship.



Nyla R. Branscombe is Professor of Psychology at University of Kansas. She received her B.A. from York University in Toronto in 1980, a M.A. from the University of Western Ontario in 1982, and her Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1986. Professor Branscombe held a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1987. In 1993 she was a Visiting Fellow at Free University of Amsterdam. She served as Associate Editor of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin for three years, and presently serves as Associate Editor of Group Processes and Intergroup Relations.

Professor Branscombe has published more than one hundred articles and chapters in professional journals and edited volumes. In 1999, she was a recipient of the Otto Klienberg prize for research on Intercultural and International Relations from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. In 2004, she co-edited the volume, Collective Guilt: International Perspectives published by Cambridge University Press., and the 2007 volume Commemorating Brown: The Social Psychology of Racism and Discrimination, published by the American Psychological Association.

Professor Branscombe's current research focuses primarily on two main issues: the psychology of privileged groups, in particular when and why they may feel guilt about their advantages and harmful actions toward other social groups, and the psychology of disadvantaged groups, especially how they cope with prejudice and discrimination.



Donn Byrne holds the rank of Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1958 from Stanford University and has held academic positions at the San Francisco State University, the University of Texas, and Purdue University as well as visiting professorships at the University of Hawaii and Stanford University. He was elected president of the Midwestern Psychological Association and of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. He headed the personality program at Texas, the social-personality programs at Purdue and Albany, and was chair of the psychology department at Albany. Professor Byrne is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and a Charter Fellow of the American Psychological Society.

During his career, Professor Byrne has published over 150 articles in psychological journals, and twenty-nine of them have been republished in books of readings. He has authored or co-authored thirty-seven chapters in edited volumes, and fourteen books, including Psychology: An Introduction to a Behavioral Science, An Introduction to Personality, The Attraction Paradigm, and Exploring Human Sexuality.

He has served on the editorial boards of fourteen professional journals and has directed the doctoral work of fifty-two Ph.D. students. He was invited to deliver a G. Stanley Hall lecture at the 1981 meeting of the American Psychological Association in Los Angeles and a state of the science address at the 1981 meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality in New York City. He was invited to testify at Attorney General Meese's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography in Houston in 1986 and to participate in Surgeon General Koop's Workshop on Pornography and Health in 1986 in Arlington, Virginia. He received an Excellence in Research Award from the University at Albany in 1987 and the Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality in 1989. In 2002, he attended a Festschrift at the University of Connecticut honoring his scientific contributions organized by his graduate students (past and present) from Texas, Purdue, and Albany. He delivered the William Griffitt Memorial Lecture at Kansas State University in 2004. Professor Byrne's current research interests focus on the determination of interpersonal attraction, adult attraction styles, and sexually coercive behavior.