Prof. Dr. Edward Tory Higgins

Profile

Academic positionFull Professor
Research fieldsSocial Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
KeywordsSocial cognition, judgment, self, motivation, self
Honours and awards

: He is author of Beyond Pleasure and Pain: How Motivation Works (Oxford) and Shared Reality: What Makes Us Strong and Tears Us Apart (Oxford). A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, he received the APS William James Fellow Award and the APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions.

Current contact address

CountryUnited States of America
CityNew York City
InstitutionColumbia University
InstituteDepartment of Psychology

Host during sponsorship

Prof. Dr. Gerald EchterhoffInstitut für Psychologie, Sozialpsychologie, Universität Münster, Münster
Start of initial sponsorship01/06/2016

Programme(s)

2015Anneliese Maier Research Award Programme

Nominator's project description

Professor Higgins is one of the most influential and most respected scholars in psychology. In a recent list of the world’s 100 most eminent psychologists of the modern era, published by the American Psychological Association, he is among grand pioneers of psychology such as Jean Piaget, Noam Chomsky, B. F. Skinner, and Daniel Kahneman. Tory Higgins has developed several highly influential and elegant theories in the fields of social cognition, motivation, and interpersonal processes, such as self-discrepancy theory, accessibility theory, regulatory focus theory, and shared reality theory, all firmly anchored in rigorous empirical studies. The research conducted in collaboration with his host in Münster will focus on humans’ motivation to create shared reality with others, including implications for social influence, intergroup conflict, radicalization, and refugee integration. This work will reveal the benefits and downsides of our distinct human motive to share our feelings, beliefs, and concerns with other people.