APS Board Goes to Seattle

Once a year, the APS Board of Directors “retreats” to some distant place to conduct necessary business and discuss “big ideas” related to the future of our organization. Last December, we met in Seattle. The President gets to choose the place, and  I thought Seattle might be a new meeting experience for some Board Members- with its beautiful mountains, vibrant inner city, eccentric restaurants, and high-tech presence. And, selfishly, it meant one fewer plane trip for me.

We met for three days throughout which it rained constantly giving those Board members new to the area little chance to see those mountains, take in the city, or glimpse Bill Gates’ $50 million waterfront estate. We mostly stayed inside the Whidbey Room of our hotel working on organizational matters.

We discussed many topics. The upcoming annual conference in Denver already has some truly exciting speakers lined up, and more surprises are in store that you’ll learn about soon. The organization of a new APS funding mechanism is well underway, enabling fans of psychological science to contribute money for worthy APS special projects. And the many ideas proposed by the Task Force on the Dissemination of Psychological Science were presented, including one on what we as an organization might do to get a Nobel Prize for Psychology added to the roster of existing Nobel Prizes. After all, Economics got added relatively late in the game. Why not a prize for Psychology, beginning in the year 2000?

The Dissemination Task Force, chaired by Mahzarin Banaji, directed its efforts towards creating ways in which APS could shape the responsible and effective dissemination of the contributions of our field. This includes educating not only the general public, high school students, lay individuals, public officials, and the corporate world, but also academic faculty in other fields and college/university administrators, about the nature of Our science and its place in the larger world of science. Lack of knowledge and even misknowledge about what we do pervades many of these worlds, and it behooves us to try to remedy this problem. Some of this effort might take place on the web. You’ll be hearing a lot more about these efforts over the next few years.

Probably the largest chunk of time was spent on an idea that first emerged a year ago when Past President Kay Deaux chaired the Board retreat meeting held in Miami. (Nobody complained about the rain that year.) It’s an idea for a new APS publication, tentatively called Psychological Science in the Public Interest. Its major aim is to provide comprehensive scientific reviews of important issues confronting society.

Think about the hot issues that might have relevant psychological science brought to bear. Does class size matter for students’ achievement? What about the efficacy of herbal remedies such as Gingko for enhancing memory and attention? Do those subliminal tapes for weight reduction, smoking cessation, and self esteem enhancement really work? Do parents matter in terms of influencing children’s behavior? A tremendous effort has been made to develop this idea by a committee chaired by Steve Ceci and Bob Bjork. If you have ideas for important topics that might be taken up and individuals who might fairly and impartially review those topics, you could communicate them to Steve or Bob. I’m particularly excited about Psychological Science in the Public Interest in part because of its enormous value as a vehicle for translating scientific psychology to the public.

A small pause in the swirl of ideas occurred for a brief celebration of the birthday of APS Director of Government Relations Sarah Brookhart. Yes this dedicated staff member spent her birthday away from her family, in rainy Seattle, to help the meeting go smoothly. Her little daughter worried about Mom spending her birthday away from home and tucked a doll inside the suitcase to keep her mother company on that big day. We tried to make it up to her with a song and some cake. But it probably didn’t begin to hold a candle to the hugs she would have gotten if our Board meeting had been held a week later. Is that dedication or what?