Please take a moment to consider two questions:
- What ignited your passion for conducting research in experimental psychology and cognitive science?
- Why is the research you conduct important for the people you pass in the grocery store to fund via the government through paying their taxes?
We know you have interesting answers to those questions, and we’d like to help you amplify your individual work and the important work of our field. One way to promote your individual work is via our Twitter account. We realize that the world may be moving to other outlets and should that be the case, we’ll join another academic-Twitter-like forum. In the meantime, we thank the Early-Career Committee for promoting our science.
Promoting the field’s work is a larger task and one that we need to do as a community. Here are possibilities:
- APA plans to reach out to Division Trios (Past President, President, President-Elect) when they need comments about a social issue, such as the effect of daylight savings time on attention, students’ metacognitive skills, or eyewitness memory. We will forward that to Division members and if the timeline for responding works for you, we hope you will work with APA to convey findings from our field to a broader audience.
- Join us at the APA Convention in Washington DC Aug 3-5, 2023. Nadia Brashier and Bob Greene are working on a fantastic program, and we all can share our field’s findings with other psychologists who teach students in introductory psychology courses, for example.
- Help us grow the Division. We currently have two seats in the APA Council, ably filled by Morton Ann Gernsbacher (through 2022), Anne Cleary, and Mark McDaniel. The more members our Division has, the more people we send to the table for discussion of APA priorities.
What can YOU do?- Do a quick poll among your colleagues and students whose work is in Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science – how many are members? Please encourage anyone not a member to consider joining either by adding Division 3 to their list of APA memberships ($25) or joining ONLY the Society (no APA membership ($25).
- Nominate a colleague who could be named a Fellow. Hajime Otani is the current Fellows chair and would welcome your suggestions.
- Share your ideas about how the Division can better meet the needs of you, your peers, and/or your students. The Leadership Team /u> welcomes your ideas, particularly our Membership Co-Chairs, Janine Jennings and Nayantara Kurpad.
By virtue of this co-authored column, we are demonstrating our commitment to increasing collaboration within the Division. For example:
- We are piloting co-chairs of committees which inherently increases our networking and community-building efforts, as well as shares the work of the Division.
- Bennett Schwartz is showing the Secretary ropes to Blaire Weidler who will take on that role next August. Similarly, Marianne Lloyd is showing the Treasurer ropes to Jennifer Frymiare who will take on that role next August.
We are also working on collaborating with other organizations.
- We are continuing our support of a Travel Award to Psychonomics administered by Women in Cognitive Science (WiCS).
- Our October Zoom panel , "Making the Job Market Less Scary" was a collaboration with the SPARK Society.
- We supported a SPARK/WiCS event at Psychonomics (so successful, it filled quickly!)
If you have interest in joining our Leadership Team and/or suggestions for productive partnerships, we welcome them.
Be on the lookout for future Zoom panels (e.g., negotiation/starting a lab) and initiatives to share the important work that experimental psychologists and cognitive scientists are doing (e.g., webinars to share demonstrations to Introductory Psychology teachers who may have trained outside of our area).
We hope you’ll support APA Division 3 with your membership dues or your time. In turn, the organization hopes to promote our members and our field.