FEATURED SPEAKERS

Building Better Citizens Through Intro Psych
Erin Hardin, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Erin Hardin, PhD
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
As many as  1.5 million students each year take Introductory psychology annually (Gurung et al., 2016), and it is one of the most popular courses for non-psychology majors (Halonen, 2011).  As such, the course provides a tremendous opportunity to help students see how  Applying psychological principles can change our lives in positive ways (APA, 2019).  In this talk, I will discuss a variety of ways instructors can harness this potential to create better learners and better world citizens, by focusing on what and how we teach within the classroom, as well as how we can use non-disposable assignments (Seraphin et al., 2018) to engage students in giving psychology away outside the classroom in socially meaningful ways.

Erin Hardin is professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the psychology department at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.  She received her BA in psychology with an interdisciplinary concentration in Chinese Studies from Grinnell College, and her MA and PhD in Counseling Psychology from The Ohio State University.  She has received numerous teaching awards, including the 2016 Robert S. Daniel Teaching Excellence Award from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology. Her favorite courses to teach are Introductory Psychology and College Teaching seminars to train graduate student instructors, both of which she has taught for 2 decades at three different institutions. She is a member of the APA Introductory Psychology Initiative’s Teacher Training group. In addition to research in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Erin’s research has also focused on cultural differences in the self and understanding individuals’ career development in their unique cultural contexts.  Most recently, her work has examined the recruitment and retention of underrepresented individuals in STEM, with an emphasis on educational attainment among rural Appalachian youth. She has also been immersed in thinking about the purpose, value, and implementation of General Education.
Inequality and Subjective Status: How Economic Inequality Shapes Thinking and Well-Being
Keith Payne, PhD
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Income inequality is rising in advanced economies around the world, and especially the United States. Epidemiological evidence suggests that higher inequality is associated with a range of poor health and social outcomes, including obesity, diabetes, unintended pregnancies, drug overdoses, violent crime, and higher mortality rates.  In this talk, I will share my framework for understanding how income inequality can affect individual lives and behaviors. This framework is based on the idea that people judge their own needs and socioeconomic status by comparison to others. This subjective status plays a key role linking economic inequalities to individual behavior. By affecting subjective status, inequality increases risky behavior, which leads to a variety of poor health and social outcomes. I will also share studies highlighting psychological reasons that inequality can create outcomes that look like poverty, even for people who are not poor.

Keith Payne is a Professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis. His research examines how inequality shapes the human mind. For example: Why do people make more self-defeating decisions when inequality is high? Why does feeling poor sometimes have more powerful effects than actually being poor? Why do people sometimes act in prejudiced ways even when they intend to be fair? He and his collaborators use the methods of experimental psychology to understand the cognitive and emotional mechanisms behind these pressing social questions. Keith Payne has received numerous awards for his work, including the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science and the Young Scholars Awards from the SAGE foundation. His book, The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die has appeared on a list of recommended books by former President Barack Obama.