APS Fellow Among Psychological Scientists Named CASBS Fellows

Four psychological scientists, including APS Fellow Su-Ling Yeh of National Taiwan University, are among 37 scholars named to the 2019-2020 class of fellows at The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University.

The CASBS fellowship brings together scholars for a year of reflection and academic interaction. The Center strives to bring diverse thinkers together to produce collective knowledge and transformative outcomes that could not be achieved independently.

During her fellowship year, Yeh plans to explore age differences in processing statistical regularity and to develop an evidence-based framework explaining that cognitive aging is partly the reflection of cumulative experiences rather than general cognitive decline. She also plans to continue research related to meta-awareness of perception, cognition, emotion, and physical status.

Yukiko Uchida, a professor of social and cultural psychology at Kyoto University in Japan, plans to evaluate the current global ranking systems of well-being from a cultural psychological perspective. She’ll pay special attention to how the current trend of market globalization changes local cultures, and consequently, the psychological functions of people in such cultures.

Also included in the 2019-2020 class are Christine Ford, a psychology professor and biostatistician affiliated with Stanford and Palo Alto University. Rather than devoting her academic year to biostatistics, Ford plans to read the correspondence she has received regarding her 2018 testimony before the US Senate, during which she described being sexually assault by then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh when they were teenagers.  Ford also plans to reflect on her experience interacting with media over the past year. 

Psychological scientist Laura Richman, an associate professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences at Duke University, will develop a book manuscript that examines the limits of medical approaches to reducing socially driven health disparities and the untapped potential of community resources and partnerships. She will examine factors that contribute to a narrow view of health disparities, including the moralization of illness and cognitive biases in how we tend to think about our own versus other’s behavior.

Michael S. Brownstein, an associate professor of philosophy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York and an APS member, will spend his fellowship year starting a book on “epistemic tribalism,” the tendency people have to form their political beliefs by considering what their peers and friends believe.

Fellows in the residential program represent the core social and behavioral sciences (anthropology, economics, history, political science, psychology, and sociology) but also the humanities, education, linguistics, communications, journalism, public policy, and the biological, natural, health, and computer sciences.