Robert S. Wyer

Robert S. Wyer, Jr.
Born United States
Residence U.S., Hong Kong
Nationality U.S.
Fields Psychology, Marketing
Institutions University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Notable awards Alexander von Humboldt Special Research Prize for Distinguished Scientists (1981), Thomas M. Ostrom Award for Distinguished Contributions to Person Memory and Social Cognition (1998), Distinguished Scientific Contribution Awards from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (2008) and the Society for Consumer Psychology (2011).

Robert S. Wyer, Jr. is a visiting professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Professor (Emeritus) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Colorado. His research interests cut across numerous areas of social information processing, including knowledge accessibility, comprehension, memory, social inference, the impact of affect on judgment and decisions, attitude formation and change, and consumer judgment and decision making.

Personal life

It was a somewhat circuitous path that led Bob Wyer to the field of social psychology. Raised in upstate New York, he initially studied engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic and after graduation, took a job at Bell Labs. Eventually, worried that he might have missed out on a classic liberal arts education, he decided to return to school at the University of Colorado for graduate study. He selected Psychology as his specialty field. Working with O. J. Harvey and William Scott, he began to investigate questions of cognitive organization and social information processing, establishing the themes that have guided his scholarship throughout his career. On completion of his doctoral studies, Wyer held academic appointments at the University of Iowa and the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. In his earliest work, he investigated a range of fundamental questions about the nature of social beliefs, attitudes, and judgment. He developed a comprehensive view of the cognitive bases of judgment and inference in his first major book, Cognitive Organization and Change: An Information Processing Approach (1974).[1] It was around this time that he moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he spent the next several decades of his research career. During that time, he began to develop a full-fledged social-cognitive perspective on topics such as attitudes, attribution, and impression formation, and he established himself as one of the most phenomenally prolific scholars in the history of social psychology.[2] He is living in Hong Kong with his wife Rashmi Adaval and his son Mikul Wyer. He has two daughters by a previous marriage: Kathy, who is a lawyer with the Justice Department in Washington, and Natalie, a social psychologist at the University of Plymouth, England. [3]

Research

Dr. Wyer is the author or coauthor of four books, the most recent being Social Comprehension and Judgment (2004).[4] He is the editor of several others including the Handbook of social cognition, the Advances in social cognition series[5] and Understanding culture: Theory, research and application (with Chi-yue Chiu and Ying-yi Hong).[6] He has published numerous journal articles and book chapters and was recently cited as having published the greatest number of articles in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in the 30 years since its inception.[7]

Services and Honors

Dr. Wyer is a former editor of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and, more recently, the Journal of Consumer Psychology, and has served on the editorial boards of numerous journals. He is a recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Special Research Prize for Distinguished Scientists in 1981, the Thomas M. Ostrom Award for Distinguished Contributions to Person Memory and Social Cognition in 1998, and Distinguished Scientific Contribution Awards from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology in 2008 and the Society for Consumer Psychology in 2011. A tribute to his remarkable contribution to the field of social cognition was made by the book, "Foundations of Social Cognition: A Festschrift in Honor of Robert S. Wyer, Jr.".[8]

Notes

  1. ↑ Wyer, Robert S. (1974), Cognitive Organization and Change: An Information Processing Approach. Hillsdale; New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  2. ↑ Bodenhausen, Galen V. and Alan J. Lambert (2003). Foundations of Social Cognition: A Festschrift in Honor of Robert S. Wyer, Jr. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  3. ↑ Bodenhausen, Galen V. and Alan J. Lambert (2003). Foundations of Social Cognition: A Festschrift in Honor of Robert S. Wyer, Jr. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  4. ↑ Wyer, R.S (2004). Social Comprehension and Judgment: The Role of Situation Models, Narratives, and Implicit Theories, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  5. ↑ Wyer, R. S., & Srull, T. K. (Eds.) (1984). Handbook of social cognition. (Vols. 1-3). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Wyer, R. S., & Srull, T. K. (Eds.) (1994). Handbook of social cognition, 2nd edition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Wyer, R. S. & Srull, T. K. (Eds.) (1988-1993). Advances in social cognition (vol. 1-6) Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Vol. 1 (1988): A dual process model of impression formation Vol. 2 (1989): Social intelligence and cognitive assessments of personality Vol. 3 (1990): Content and process specificity in the effects of social experience Vol. 4 (1991): The content, structure and operation of thought systems Vol. 5 (1992): The representation of trait and behavioral knowledge about self Vol. 6 (1993): Toward a general theory of anger and emotion Wyer, R. S. (Ed.) (1994-1999) Advances in social cognition (vol. 7-12). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Vol. 7 (1994): Associated Systems Theory Vol. 8 (1995): Knowledge and memory: The real story Vol. 9 (1996): Ruminative thoughts Vol. 10 (1997): The automaticity of everyday life Vol. 11 (1998): Stereotype activation and inhibition Vol. 12 (1999): Perspectives on behavioral self-regulation
  6. ↑ Robert S. Wyer, Chi-yue Chiu, and Ying-yi Hong (2009). Understanding Culture: Theory, Research, and Application. NY, New York: Psychology Press.
  7. ↑ Quinones-Vidal, E., Lopez-Garcia, J., Penaranda-Ortega, M., & Totosa-Gil, F.(2004). The nature of social and personality psychology as reflected in JPSP, 1965-2000. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86,435-452.
  8. ↑ Bodenhausen, Galen V. and Alan J. Lambert (2003). Foundations of Social Cognition: A Festschrift in Honor of Robert S. Wyer, Jr. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

References

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