Nicholas Epley, a social psychologist on the faculty of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, has been selected to receive the 2011 American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology in the area of social psychology.
The early career award honors researchers for contributions made during the first nine years after receiving their PhD. He is the first faculty member at a business school to receive the award since it was first given in 1974.
Epley, the John Templeton Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and John E. Jeuck Faculty Fellow at Chicago Booth, was recognized for his research on the experimental study of social cognition, perspective taking, and intuitive human judgment.
His research has appeared in more than two dozen journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, Psychological Review, Proceedings of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
Epley’s most well known work includes “Feeling ‘Holier than thou’: Are self–serving assessments produced by errors in self or social prediction,” with D. Dunning published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, “Putting adjustment back in the anchoring and adjustment heuristic: Divergent processing of self–generated and experimenter–provided anchors,” with T. Gilovich published in Psychological Science, “Perspective taking as egocentric anchoring and adjustment,” with B. Keysar, L. Van Boven, and T. Gilovich published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and “On seeing human: A three–factor theory of anthropomorphism,” with A. Waytz and J. Cacioppo published in Psychological Review.
His recent work includes “How to seem telepathic: Enabling mind reading by matching self–construal,” with T. Eyal published in Psychological Science, “Mind Perception” with A. Waytz published in the Handbook of Social Psychology, and “The intentional mind and the hot hand: Perceiving intentions makes streaks seem likely to continue,” with E.M. Caruso and A. Waytz, published in Cognition.
Epley received the Theoretical Innovation Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in 2008 (with co–authors Adam Waytz and John Cacioppo.) He is an Associate Editor of Behavioral Science and Public Policy, and a consulting editor of the Journal of Personality and Society Psychology, Self and Identify, and Social Psychological and Personality Science.
“Most people are intuitive psychologists in their daily lives — wondering why people think or behave as they do,” Epley said. “I just happened to find a profession that enables me to answer these questions for a living.”
During the current academic quarter Epley is teaching a general management course for MBA students.
Epley joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 2005 after spending several years on the faculty in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He received a PhD in psychology from Cornell University and a bacehlor's in psychology and philosophy from Saint Olaf College.
He will receive the award from the American Psychological Association at the group’s annual convention Aug. 4-7 in Washington, D.C.
—Prof. Kunle Odunsi
