Div. 21 President

Robert W. Proctor
Distinguished Professor
Department of Psychological Sciences
Purdue University
703 Third Street
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2081
Phone: (765)494-0784

Robert Proctor, PhD, has worked in the area of basic and applied human performance in university settings for more than 40 years. He has taught the course Human Factors in Engineering, which is cross-listed in Psychology and Industrial Engineering, since 1988. Proctor has served as advisor for more than 30 graduate students and has been the advisor for the Purdue Student Chapter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society since 1996. He received Outstanding Graduate Mentor and Outstanding Advisor awards in 2014 and 2013 in acknowledgement of his work as an advisor. His research investigates basic aspects of human information processing, with an emphasis on selection and control of action and applied aspects of human factors design, as well as the link between the two. He is an authority on stimulus-response compatibility effects, or why some pairings of displayed information and responses are easier than others for people to process. He has published over 250 journal articles, and in 2013 received the Franklin V. Taylor Award for Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Applied Experimental/Engineering Psychology from Div. 21. Proctor is editor of the American Journal of Psychology, published continuously since 1887, when it was founded as the first English language journal devoted to scientific psychology. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and the Psychonomic Society.