2021 APS Virtual Convention Day Two Content Available Online

The 2021 APS Virtual Convention may have come to an end, but the excitement isn’t over! Recordings of many speakers are available to registered attendees in the convention platform until June 28. 

Here are a few highlights of Day Two programming, and don’t forget to check out the Virtual Poster Showcase and Lifetime Award Addresses, as well as anything you may have missed from the first day of convention.

Keynote Addresses | Panel Discussions | Special Sessions | Student Programs

Keynote Addresses 

Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do 

Fred Kavli Keynote Address

APS President Elect Jennifer L. Eberhardt (Stanford University, USA) 

Racial imagery and judgments shape actions and outcomes in our criminal-justice system, neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces to a startling extent. The negative impact of racial bias is profound, but psychological science offers direction on how to disrupt it. Eberhardt provides an overview of the many mitigation tools at our disposal to fight bias in the criminal justice system, education, and the workplace. These include slowing down our thinking using more objective checks on potentially biased behavior and increased institutional training, accountability, and egalitarian norms. 

“There’s a lot of power in just the simple things, and we want to keep up the fight at this level even as we take aim at the harder things,” Eberhardt said. “As a nation we want to take aim at the racial narratives that keep people anchored at the bottom of society. We want to take aim at the structural disparities that those narratives produce and reflect, and that’s a much heavier lift, yet in this too we can all take part.” 

American Redemption: Variations on a Good Life Story

Bring the Family Address

Dan P. McAdams (Northwestern University, USA) 

Beginning in adulthood, humans formulate internal life stories—narrative identities—reconstructing the past and imagining the future so as to confer a sense of plot, purpose, and temporal coherence upon our lives. American adults, in their midlife years, tell redemptive life stories. Tracking the developmental move from suffering to enhancement, redemptive life stories are positively associated with psychological well-being, civic engagement, and an adult’s commitment to promoting the well-being of future generations. In one notable case study of a prominent American adult, McAdams contends that former U.S. President Donald J. Trump may never have formulated a narrative identity for his life. 

“Donald Trump is a very strange case,” McAdams said. “The human norm instead is to develop a narrative identity beginning in the emerging adult years and expanding out across the life course. The story is shaped by personal experience and culture.”

Panel Discussions

Addressing Climate Change and Its Psychological, Ethical, and Socio-Economic Challenges 

Susan Clayton (The College of Wooster, USA), Dale Jamieson (New York University, USA), Joyashree Roy (Institute of Technology, Thailand), Kim-Pong (Kevin) Tam (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) 

Mitigating the potentially devastating political, socioeconomic, and environmental consequences of climate change requires urgent and wide-ranging action. In this panel, researchers discuss the vulnerabilities of human societies and natural systems, factors that lead people to accept or deny the reality of climate change, and the factors that contribute to individual and collective environmental action.

Panel Discussion – Misinformation: Psychological Processes and Social Network Mechanisms 

Dolores Albarracin (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA), Nadia M.  Brashier (Harvard University, USA), Ciara M.  Greene (University College Dublin, Ireland), Gordon Pennycook (University of Regina, Canada) 

As the number of sources and amount of information available online have increased, the ability of citizens to effectively sort out facts from non-facts has often been jeopardized. Understanding how the human mind succeeds or fails in processing information as well as misinformation can be critical for society to make steps toward regulating how information is delivered on public channels and by public officials. 

Special Sessions 

Don’t SoTL for Less: Researching Teaching and Learning for a Post Pandemic World 

Regan A.R. Gurung (Oregon State University, USA) 

In the 30 years since the phrase Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) was coined, it has undergone many changes and gone by different names. In this session Gurung provides a contemporary picture of SoTL from within the psychological sciences, overview a process model to guide SoTL, review significant challenges for the practice, and provide directions for the future. 

BIPOC Mental Health, Social Justice and COVID-19: This Moment Requires Authenticity 

Alfiee Breland-Noble (the AAKOMA Project) 

Given the current and future impacts of the trauma resulting from the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and the continuing fight for racial justice, Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) of all ages are at a critical juncture regarding mental health. The AAKOMA Project is leading work that can inform psychologists’ engagement as community partners to influence positive change in health care and social service sector. 

Go Viral: 9 Pandemic Examples That Teach Psychological Science 

Susan A. Nolan (Seton Hall University) 

The pandemic is an ongoing science lesson, much of which pertains directly to psychological science and has implications for courses across the curriculum. From probability to data visualization to science communication to misinformation, there are scores of examples that elucidate psychological science.  

Student Programs

Student Research and RISE Award Recognition 

Celebrate and learn about the award-winning research from APS students. Awardees will present their research during this one-hour session. 

APS Pitch Perfect Competition Finals 

APS students will put their persuasive powers to the test when the finalists in the Pitch Perfect Three-Minute Thesis Competition. 

Registered attendees can view these and other recorded events in the convention platform until June 28, 2021. The Virtual Poster Showcase featuring posters and Flash Talks will be available online until September 1, 2021.