Dr. Nancy Dess Elected APA Fellow
Dr. Nancy Dess was recently elected to fellow status in the Association for Psychological Science, a
Washington-based organization with 20,000 members of psychological scientists, academics, clinicians, researchers, teachers,
and administrators elects only the most prominent scientists in the discipline. Congratulations Dr. Dess! Well deserved!
Dr. Pennie Foster-Fishman Visits Oxy
As an invited guest for the Brighouse Fund for Organizational Psychology Speakers, Dr. Pennie
Foster-Fishman (Professor of Psychology at Michigan State University) spoke about "Transforming Communities:
The role of youth, adults, local organizations, and community government in creating healthy neighborhoods." We
thank her for visiting Occidental to share her expertise and research on human service delivery reform and
systems change in communities, in what was a very successful event.
Psychology Offices Relocated
During the construction and renovation of Swan Hall, the Psychology faculty are now located in the temporary office
trailers next to Bell-Young Hall by the intersection of Bird and Weller Roads. One trailer houses administrative offices
and psychology laboratories for research, while a second contains faculty offices.
Dr. Shtulman Receives NSF Award
Dr. Andrew Shtulman received a prestigious grant award of nearly $500k by the National Science Foundation Faculty Early
Career Development program (CAREER). His proposal detailed a series of 12 studies on the causes and consequences of
conceptual change in cognitive beliefs that will be conducted in his lab at Oxy in the next few years. One of the studies
will attempt to resolve competing ideas in the literature about whether complex scientific phenomenon, such as evolution
by natural selection, cannot be taught until high school, or whether these topics can be taught at earlier grades.
Shtulman hypothesizes that since younger children may have fewer beliefs and experiences that might interfere with their
learning, it should be easier to bring about a change in knowledge and skills about a particular science concept at that age.
Publication: Response Bias Indicators
Dr. Kim and colleagues published a review of the literature on faking and response biases exhibited by job applicants,
clinical samples, and the general population with respect to personality testing. Their synthesis suggests that traditional
measures of faking do not appear to be effective methods for detecting or correcting for (statistically) responses that people distort
intentionally. Published paper: McGrath, R. E., Mitchell, M., Kim, B. H., & Hough, L. (2010). Evidence for Response Bias
as a Source of Error Variance in Applied Assessment. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 450-470.