Award News

APS, Psi Chi Offer Bandura Award

Albert Bandura has made great contributions to psychology through his teaching and research. To honor his contributions, APS and Psi Chi are partnering to offer the Psi Chi/APS Albert Bandura Graduate Research Award.

Through this partnership, Psi Chi, the National Honor Society in Psychology, and APS hope to “encourage, stimulate, and maintain excellence in scholarship, and advance the science of psychology.”

APS Executive Director Alan Kraut said, “APS welcomes the opportunity to partner with Psi Chi in an effort to recognize science-based graduate student research. APS is proud to honor Bandura and his great contributions to psychology.”

Albert Bandura is a distinguished member of Psi Chi and both a William James Fellow and a James McKeen Cattell Fellow of APS. This award recognizes the dedication and support Bandura has given to his students and their research during his lifetime. Bandura is widely known for Social Learning Theory. This theory hypothesizes that behavior is not inherited, but instead is learned, through behavior modeling. This hypothesis was supported by his well-known Bobo doll experiment, during which children imitated violent behaviors they had witnessed previously. The data gathered supported that observational learning causes behavior.

The award is open to all graduate students who have published and/or presented a paper at a national, regional, or state psychology convention between stated deadlines. Applicants must be either a student member of APS and a member of Psi Chi. One winner receives up to $1,000 for travel expenses to attend the APS Annual Convention to receive the award, a three year membership with APS including subscriptions to all of the journals.

Editor’s Note: Bandura was awarded the 2003-2004 James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award.

Epler, Cale Win 2nd SSCP Graduate Poster Session

The winners of the second annual Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology poster session are Amee Epler, University of Missouri-Columbia, and Ellison Cale, Emory University. The SSCP graduate student poster session is held annually at the American Psychological Society Annual Convention. APS presents the two winners with complimentary memberships.

“It seems second nature for APS to partner with SSCP,” said APS Executive Director Alan Kraut. “SSCP’s commitment to empirical research and scientific principles goes hand-in-hand with the science-based psychology in the public interest mission of APS. We are pleased to support the SSCP graduate student poster session with APS memberships.”

The session at this year’s meeting in Atlanta featured an impressive array of posters. Yale University’s Teresa Treat, a contest judge, said that “it was very exciting to see the high caliber of research that was presented by the seven up-and-coming clinical scientists.”

Anna Bardone-Cone, University of Missouri-Columbia, was another contest judge. She called the winners Epler and Cale the best overall “athletes” in the contest. “Each seemed to have some strength, whether it be in questions asked, methodology used, etc,” Bardone-Cone said. “The winner was based on the research question posed, the approach used to test the hypotheses, and the conversations with the student presenters.”

Cale’s poster, titled “Psychopathology Factors in Predicting Risk for Aggressive and Violent Behavior: A Test of the ‘Threatened Egotism’ Hypothesis,” highlighted the relationship among psychopathology, narcissism, and aggression. Cale’s research data were gathered from a sample of adult male inmates showing that psychopathic individuals respond more aggressively to ego threats than narcissistic individuals.

Epler’s poster, “Longitudinal Patterns of Abstention and Drinking: Relation to Reasons For Not Drinking,” focused on two patterns of association relating frequency of and abstinence from drinking. The findings suggested that altering the social-normative environment is a more effective way to prevent heavy drinking than focusing on the adverse consequences of drinking.

“The judged session provided motivation to be better prepared to discuss my research, which contributed greatly to the learning experience of the session,” Epler said. “I enjoyed the opportunity to discuss my research with other interested researchers during the poster session. I received thoughtful feedback and helpful suggestions for further study in the areas of abstention and reasons for not drinking.”