When Congress created the National Medal of Science in 1959 to be awarded by the president of the United States, psychology was not among the eligible sciences. A concerted lobbying effort in the late 1970s changed that situation, adding social and behavioral sciences to the listing of eligible disciplines. This article describes how the award…

Presents a short biography of the winner of the American Psychological Association/American Psychological Association of Graduate Students Award for Distinguished Graduate Student in Professional Psychology. The 2012 winner is Melissa L. Anderson for her ongoing commitment to understanding, treating, and preventing domestic violence in Deaf women…

Whether and how civil society should recognize committed relationships between same-sex partners has become a prominent, often divisive, policy issue. The present article reviews relevant behavioral and social science research to assess the validity of key factual claims in this debate. The data indicate that same-sex and heterosexual…

Peer review is a gatekeeper, the final arbiter of what is valued in academia, but it has been criticized in relation to traditional psychological research criteria of reliability, validity, generalizability, and potential biases. Despite a considerable literature, there is surprisingly little sound peer-review research examining these criteria or…

In this article, the author presents his comments on "Realism, Instrumentalism, and Scientific Symbiosis: Psychological Theory as a Search for Truth and the Discovery of Solutions" by John T. Cacioppo, Gun R. Semin and Gary G. Berntson. In the original article, the authors recommended the combined use of the philosophies of scientific realism and…

Research on the effects of school desegregation, once quite common in psychology and related fields, has declined considerably since the mid-1980s. Factors contributing to changes in the quantity and focus of such research since the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision are discussed, with an emphasis on those related to the decline of this…

The difficulties of operationalizing race in research and practice for social, behavioral, and genetic researchers and practitioners are neither new nor related to recent genetic knowledge. For geneticists, the bases for understanding groups are clines, observed traits that gradually change in frequency between geographic regions without distinct…

Understanding disability through a social paradigm offers opportunities to reframe the way psychologists define problems related to disability, develop more collaborative relationships between psychologists and people with disabilities, and adopt new professional responsibilities. Addresses the impact of the social paradigm on policies within…

Describes a realist approach to the philosophy of science as an alternative to current standard and paradigmatic views of science. Discusses implications of the realist philosophy for psychology, and holds that explanation of individual behavior requires not only psychological theory, but also situational, biographical, and historical information.…

Presents highlights of important construct validity findings related to self-concept research, examining milestones in self-concept construct validity research during the past century; reviewing the current status of self-concept research, with a focus on cross-cultural equivalency; and postulating possible trends and areas of self-concept…

Scientific realism holds that scientific theories are approximations of universal truths about reality, whereas scientific instrumentalism posits that scientific theories are intellectual structures that provide adequate predictions of what is observed and useful frameworks for answering questions and solving problems in a given domain. These…

The "end of ideology" was declared by social scientists in the aftermath of World War II. They argued that: (1) ordinary citizens' political attitudes lack the kind of stability, consistency, and constraint that ideology requires; (2) ideological constructs such as liberalism and conservatism lack motivational potency and behavioral…

The results of a nation-wide survey focusing on the needs, major problems, and characteristics of junior college psychology instructors and the courses they teach. (MB)

This statement was an appendix to the appellants' briefs in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, Briggs v. Elliott, and Davis v. Prince Edward County, Virginia, cases. The statement offers definitions of segregation and discusses the implications and potential effects of segregation on children both in minority and majority groups.

Most of the social problems facing nations today, and the current drive for more citizen participation, stem from this experience of lack of power among many persons. (DM)