Jack Brigham

Professor of Psychology

5/31/02

During the period of rapid growth in the Psychology Department during the 1960s, the absence of Social Psychologists was noted as a limitation by the visitors for the Department's Clinical Psychology Training Grant. The decision was made to develop a full-fledged Social area.

The first social psychologists joined the faculty in 1969. William Haythorn, Head of the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, MD, was hired to direct the area. Haythorn had received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 1954 and was widely recognized for his research on interactions within small groups working in isolation. Jack Brigham, a new Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, was also hired in 1969. Brigham's research interests focused on racial attitudes and stereotypes. There were relatively few Social Psychologists at universities in the South as the decade of the sixties drew to a close, apparently because some of the people holding power in the South viewed them negatively (as being associated with political liberalism and pressure for civil rights advances) and as potential sources of "trouble". Indeed, shortly after his arrival, Brigham received a letter from Lawrence Wrightsman, a Social Psychologist at Peabody College in Nashville, TN, welcoming him to the South and telling him he was now part of a "very rare breed": a Social Psychologist in the South.

Russell Clark III joined the Department in 1970, and Stephen West joined in 1972. Russ Clark was a new Social Psychology Ph.D. from the University of Kansas whose interests centered on group decision-making (the "risky shift"). Steve West was a new Ph.D. from the University of Texas who was interested in aggression. At that point, the department seemed well on its way to creating a Social Psychology Area that would include 6 to 10 faculty members who would be on equal footing with the other graduate training areas within the Department. Indeed, this was the Department's expressed goal, as described by Department Chair Joe Grosslight to each of the new Social faculty when they were being recruited.

Due largely to two events in the early 1970s, the proposed Social Area did not become a reality. First, the national economic recession led to very tight budgets and hiring freezes. Secondly, there was dissension within the University about granting tenure to Haythorn. He had been hired as a full Professor, but without tenure. Haythorn's closest colleagues, the three other faculty in the Social area, were unable to take part directly in this process because they themselves were not yet tenured. After much turmoil, Haythorn, who had a joint appointment in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at FSU, was granted tenure. However, shortly thereafter he chose to leave FSU and joined the Group Decision Making and Performance Section of the Army Research Institute. The remaining Social faculty thus consisted of three Assistant Professors. Lee Sechrest, (Ph.D., Ohio State University, 1956) a senior member of the Clinical faculty from 1973 to 1980 whose research interests overlapped a great deal with Social, helped mentor Social graduate students during this period.

When Departmental hiring resumed in subsequent years, the impetus to form a full Social area was greatly diminished and new hires were made in other areas instead. Steve West left in 1981 to join the faculty at Arizona State University, a decision he later said was the toughest of his academic career. Russ Clark, who had become Director of Graduate Training at FSU, left in 1989 to take a position as Department Chair at the University of North Texas. During this period, there were intermittent discussions about incorporating the Social faculty into the (then) Experimental/Psychobiology program or into the Clinical program, but no definitive steps were taken. There continued to be a small number of Social graduate students during the 1980s, and several outstanding Social students received their Ph.D.'s during this period, including Edward Donnerstein (1972; Haythorn, Major Professor), Anne Maass (1982, Clark, Major Professor), Melissa WolfsKeil (1984, Brigham, Major Professor), and Robert Bothwell (1985; Brigham, Major Professor).

During the 1980s and 1990s many Psychology faculty remained favorable to the idea of creating a Social area in the Department. In the meantime, the sole remaining member of the original initiative, Jack Brigham, became a member of the Cognitive and Behavioral Science (CBS) area when it was formed in 1989.

At a Departmental retreat held in 1995, the Psychology faculty expressed renewed enthusiasm and support for the (re-)establishment of a Social area for graduate training. With Arts & Sciences Dean Donald Foss's strong support, Ashby Plant was hired in 2000, and a commitment to hiring senior faculty in the area was made. Ashby, a new University of Wisconsin Ph.D., brought a research focus on people's attempts to control racially prejudiced responses. Efforts to hire at the senior level reached fruition when two eminent Social Psychologists, Roy Baumeister (Ph.D. Princeton, 1978) and Dianne Tice, (Ph.D. Princeton, 1987) agreed to leave Case Western Reserve University and join the Department in January, 2003. Baumeister will hold an endowed chair as the Frances Eppes Professor of Psychology. His research focuses on various aspects of the self. Recent work has examined the interactions among self-control, self-regulation, and ego-depletion, as well as the relationship between self-esteem and violent behavior. Tice will assume a full Professor position. Her research focuses are on the behavioral, motivational, and emotional components of the self. Her current projects include studies of how acts of self-control and self-regulation may affect subsequent acts of self-control, as well as studies of the effects of social rejection.

As a consequence of these recent hirings, the Social area of the Department will begin 2003 with a total of 4 faculty and a promise to add new faculty in the near future.

It may be noted that Social Psychology is also taught at FSU by faculty in the Sociology Department in the College of Social Sciences. That group is not closely allied with faculty in the Department of Psychology and its history is not recounted here.