Paul Stern wins division Proshansky-Newman award

Paul C. Stern (National Research Council and Norwegian University of Science and Technology) won the division's 2012 Proshansky-Newman Professional Achievement Award. In Orlando at the award's symposium, he delivered a presentation titled "Going Beyond Application to Integration: How Psychologists Can More Effectively Address Real World Problems."

The abstract he prepared for the address follows:

"Psychologists can make meaningful contributions to helping solve a range of real world problems. This talk focused on the specific case of environmental problems, though the ideas are applicable in many domains. Applying psychology typically means taking an established theory or concept from psychology and demonstrating that it has a statistically significant association with or effect on a behavior that has some environmental significance. Integrating psychology typically begins from an examination of an environmental condition or problem and seeks ways to understand or change it by combining insights from psychology with those from other fields. The presentation illustrated the difference between applied and integrated psychology with examples from energy consumption and management of commons. Finally, it reflected on barriers to doing integrated psychology and on ways to overcome them."

References

Dietz, T., Gardner, G.T., Gilligan, J., Stern, P.C., & Vandenbergh, M.P. (2009). Household actions can provide a behavioral wedge to rapidly reduce U.S. carbon emissions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 18452-18456.

Stern, P.C. (2011). Contributions of psychology to limiting climate change. American Psychologist, 66, 303-314.

Dietz, T., Ostrom, E., & Stern, P.C. (2003). The struggle to govern the commons. Science, 302, 1907-1912 and online supplement.

Stern, P.C. (2011). Design principles for global commons: Natural resources and emerging technologies. International Journal of the Commons, 5, 213-232.