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Roy F. Baumeister is the Francis Eppes Eminent Scholar
and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University.
He is internationally known for his research in social psychology that
spans topics ranging from the human need to belong and the effects of
rejection to how people seek to make their lives meaningful to the essence
of the relationship between the individual and society.
In his latest book, Willpower:
Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strengths, Dr. Baumeister collaborates
with New York Times science writer John Tierney to revolutionize
our understanding of the most coveted human virtue: self-control.
In what became one of the most cited papers in social science literature,
Dr. Baumeister discovered that willpower actually operates like a muscle:
it can be strengthened with practice and fatigued by overuse.
In Baumeister's latest research on self-control, he shows that we typically
spend four hours every day resisting temptation.
A summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University, Dr. Baumeister
did graduate work at the University of Heidelberg, took a M.A. in psychology
at Duke University, and received his Ph.D. in experimental social psychology
from Princeton in 1978.
After holding a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellowship
at the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied personality
and social structure, he joined the psychology faculty at Case Western
Reserve University as an assistant professor in 1979.
He was named a full professor a decade later and awarded the E. Smith
Professorship in the Liberal Arts in 1992, a post he held until accepting
his present chair at Florida State in 2003.
Dr. Baumeister has been a visiting associate professor at the University
of Texas at Austin, a visiting professor at the Max Planck Institute
in Munich and at the University of Virginia, and a fellow at the Center
for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
His research has been supported by the National Institute of Mental
Health and the John Templeton Foundation. An elected fellow of the Society
for Personality and Social Psychology, he has just been honored with
the Jack Block Award for lifetime career achievement by the Society
for Personality and Social Psychology. In January 2012, he will receive
the International Society for Self and Identity Lifetime Career Award.
Dr. Baumeister has over 400 publications (including 27 books).
According to the Institute for Scientific Information, his research
has been cited over ten thousand times by other scientists, making him
one of the most influential social psychologists in the world. Dr. Baumeister's
research is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health and
by the Templeton Foundation. He and Brad Bushman have recently authored
a social psychology textbook, Social Psychology and Human Nature.
Dr. Baumeister was born in Cleveland, the son of an immigrant businessman
and a schoolteacher. He now lives by a small lake in Tallahassee with
his wife and colleague, Dianne Tice, and their daughter, Athena, a seventh
grade student and child film actress. In his (very rare) spare time,
he enjoys windsurfing, playing jazz guitar, and composing music on the
piano.
--The Reality of the Male Sex Drive
--Do the Laws of Physics Permit Any Exceptions?
--Determinism is NOt Just Causality
--Just Exactly What is Determinism?
--Should Football Penalize Celebrating and Taunting?
--Why I Don't Vote
--Sex and Politicians
--Is there anything good about men?
--Not all reality is physical
--Why Does Money Matter? The Psychological Meaning of Money
A partial list of books by Dr. Baumeister
Your Own Worst Enemy: Understanding the Paradox of Self-Defeating Behavior
Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty
Social Psychology and Human Nature
Losing Control: How and Why People Fail at Self-Regulation
The Social Dimension of Sex
Breaking Hearts: The Two Sides of Unrequited Love
Masochism and the Self
Identity: Cultural Change and the Struggle for Self
Escaping the Self: Alcoholism, Spirituality, Masochism, and Other Flights
from the Burden of Selfhood
Meanings of life
The Cultural Animal: Human Nature, Meaning, and Social Life
Self in Social Psychology: Key Readings (Key Readings in Social Psychology)
Encyclopedia of Social Psychology (2 Volume Set)
Masochism and the Self
Social Psychology and Human Sexuality: Key Readings (Key Readings in
Social Psychology)
Self-Esteem: The Puzzle of Low Self-Regard (The Plenum Series in Social/Clinical
Psychology)
Public Self and Private Self (Springer Series in Social Psychology)
Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications research
Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting
Men
Free Will and Consciousness: How Might They Work?
Advanced Social Psychology: The State of the Science
second or third co-editor in scientific collections:
Psychology of Self-Regulation: Cognitive, Affective, and Motivational
Processes (Sydney Symposium in Social Psychology)
Human Sexuality: Meeting Your Basic Needs
Do Emotions Help or Hurt Decision Making?: A Hedgefoxian Perspective
Time and Decision: Economic and Psychological Perspectives on Intertemporal
Choice
Are We Free? Psychology and Free Will
BEN'S
INTERVIEW WITH ROY F. BAUMEISTER, Ph.D.
