Eliot R. Smith

Across four decades, Eliot R. Smith has made pioneering contributions to social psychology that are broad, deep, and of enduring impact.  A profound theoretical thinker, a superb methodologist, and a leading-edge quantitative scientist, Eliot has spearheaded innovation in the service of integration across social psychology's often disparate accounts of social behavior. As a result, he reshaped the way we conceptualize and study social phenomena, and thus changed the discipline of social psychology.  

Eliot Smith received a B.A. in Social Relations from Harvard University in 1971 and stayed on to receive his Ph.D. in Social Psychology in 1975. His doctoral advisor was Thomas Pettigrew, who has had an abiding influence on Eliot's thinking about social behavior. After faculty appointments at the University of California, Riverside, and Purdue University, Eliot was recruited to Indiana University in 2003 and was named Chancellor's Professor in 2008 and Distinguished Professor in 2019.  In 2020, Eliot was honored with the IU Bicentennial Medal in recognition of his outstanding contributions to Indiana University.

Eliot was one of the early proponents of the social cognition approach to understanding social phenomena in terms of basic processes of human thought. His seminal work on mental representations, exemplar-based models, automaticity, procedural knowledge, and the operation of dual process models helped shape the thinking of generations of social psychologists working on topics such as attribution, person perception, the self, persuasion, attitudes and behavior, and stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. He championed the concept of socially situated cognition to social psychologists, showing how perceptual, cognitive, personality, and emotion phenomena all arose from individuals in transaction with their physical, social, and cultural environments.  His thinking about socially situated cognition provided a framework for thinking about socially distributed thinking, leading to novel work on intragroup processes and collective cognition, including the role in person perception of gossip spread through social networks. His application of social identity theory to emotions spawned an entire field of endeavor looking at the social antecedents, nature, and consequences of emotions rooted in group and intergroup, rather than individual, experience.  

Long before replicability became an issue, Eliot was an advocate of methods that ensured both rigor and a deeper understanding of social phenomena. For many in the field, the classic Judd, Smith, and Kidder (1990) research methods text or various iterations of his research design chapter in the Reis and Judd Handbook of Research Methods in Social and Personality Psychology were the touchstone.  But Eliot also helped usher connectionist models, network analysis, and agent-based modeling into the field—influencing not just what the discipline studied, but how we studied it.

Respect for the quality of his ideas and the impact of his research is reflected in Eliot's many awards and honors. His research publications have garnered SPSSI's Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize (1998), SPSP's Wegner Theoretical Innovation Prize (2005), and the Best Paper Award from the International Social Cognition Network (2009). In 2004 he was given the Thomas M. Ostrom Award for outstanding career contributions to the field of social cognition. Eliot was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012.  Finally, in 2018 he was the recipient of both SPSP's Donald T. Campbell Award and SESP's Distinguished Scientist Award, both of which recognize a career of distinguished scholarly achievement and sustained excellence in research in social psychology.

Eliot's impact on the discipline is inseparably intertwined with the service he has provided it. He has served as Editor of both our premier theoretical (PSPR) and our premier empirical (JPSP: Attitudes and Social Cognition) journals.  He has worked both personally and professionally to integrate North American and European social psychology to the betterment of the discipline. Those who have attended SPSP's primary training program, the Summer Institute for Social and Personality Psychology, can thank Eliot for the role he played in developing and securing the institutes' first 10 years of funding (efforts for which he received SPSP's 2008 Service Award for contributions to the discipline).

Much of Eliot's legacy lies in the positive impact he has had on four decades of students and early career scholars.  He has been first and foremost a wise mentor and a generous collaborator, nurturing the careers and contributions of dozens of young (and now, not so young) psychological scientists who now pay forward his wisdom, integrity, and support in classrooms, labs, offices, and agencies, both nationally and internationally.

Tributes

Eliot was our colleague at Purdue for many years, and he was instrumental in helping each of us become established as scholars. We could not have asked for a better colleague. Eliot is one of those rare individuals who combines an exceptionally brilliant mind, deep insight into our field, strong commitment to service, and an endlessly supportive disposition. He leads by example, always providing a voice of reason. His research, which has been innovative and inspired scholars across multiple disciplines, truly models excellence in science. We feel so fortunate to have had him in our lives. Thank you, Eliot!

• – Chris Agnew and Ximena Arriaga

Science tends to have a short attention span, often reintroducing ideas that were originally proposed beyond the horizon of its collective memory. So few things delight me more than retracing our field’s intellectual steps, following crumb trails of ideas back through the literature to their original sources. More often than anyone else, the person standing at the end of the crumb trail is Eliot Smith. Inevitably, just when I think I have a handle on his many contributions—intergroup emotion, dual-process models, situated cognition, stereotyping, person categorization, impression formation, connectionism, agent-based modeling—I find yet another original, deeply elegant theoretical idea from the 80s that knocks my socks off. Eliot is truly one of social cognition’s most brilliant visionaries—a constant innovator and inspiration, with many ideas that were ahead of their time. I’ve learned it’s wise to check Eliot’s oeuvre before assuming any idea I have is new. 

I consider myself lucky to have spent time with Eliot over the past 20 years, often in remote lakeside lodges and mountain retreats at meetings of the Person Memory Interest Group—the social and intellectual hub for social cognition that Eliot co-organized for many years. We learned from Eliot’s warmth, modesty, and supportiveness that our science is just as much about community. I’m grateful for the kindness and generosity he’s shown me over the years, welcoming me to the social cognition community when I was a new professor and, still, always being eager to chat about new (and old) ideas. 

• – David Amodio

Eliot Smith has unquestionably been a leading figure in the field of social cognition.  And though his impact on the field is widely known, his impact on many of us in the field may be less so.  In our many years as colleagues at Purdue University, I found Eliot to be incredibly knowledgeable both about social cognition and about cutting-edge developments in cognitive psychology.  He was my go-to source of information about many topics and issues, and my thinking benefitted greatly from our conversations.  And though we collaborated only once, on a chapter on basic principles of social cognition, it was both a pleasure and an edifying experience for me.  In working on that chapter, and in our many other discussions over the years, we seemed to agree about so many things, and I always took that agreement as a sign that I must be on the right track.  Because he so obviously was.

• – Donal Carlston

Thank you, Eliot, for your exceptional contributions to our field! Your research, mentorship, and editing have moved our field forward in so many ways. I am so grateful for your warm and supportive presence at conferences - thanks for listening patiently to my research ideas and questions!

• – Jacqueline M. Chen

I was fortunate to be a graduate student after Eliot joined as faculty at Indiana University. I took several seminars during my time and would periodically participate in his research lab. Whether in the classroom or in research seminars, Eliot would (in his quiet way) always push me to expand my thinking. Our conversations taught me a lot about the value of openness to opposing perspectives and the importance of challenging my assumptions. To this day, those experiences serve as a model for many of my professional and personal interactions. Eliot is beyond deserving of this recognition, and I am thankful for the opportunity to work with and learn from him.

• – Joshua Clarkson 

Thank you to Eliot Smith for his guidance, especially during my Ph.D. He first made major impacts in social psychology, groups, and emotions, and then applied his expertise of these to a new context - beyond humans, and even biological creatures, to the realm of robots. His work in human-robot interaction helps us understand in what ways people do, and in what ways they do not, treat robots like people. 

It was a delight working with Eliot. He has always had an open mind and delighted in discussing new ideas. It has been an honor to work with him, and it set the trajectory for my career. Thank you so much!

• – Marlena R. Fraune

There are many reasons to honor Eliot Smith for his contributions to social psychology. For me, there are personal experiences that are the basis for my valuing him so highly. The strong friendship between Eliot and me derives primarily from our involvement in the Person Memory Interest Group (PMIG), established and organized during the 1980s by Tom Ostrom. Under Tom's guidance, PMIG became an important annual pre-SESP conference. I don't think Eliot or I have ever missed a meeting of PMIG. When Tom died in 1994 Eliot and I became co-organizers of PMIG for several years and worked to perpetuate its growth and success. Working with Eliot in this effort was a very gratifying experience.

Of course, Eliot's broader significance in social psychology is based on his theoretical and research contributions, which have been numerous and very significant. Many of us first learned about these contributions because Eliot loves to give talks at PMIG. Every other year or so Eliot would give a talk, but his talks never simply updated us on what he had said in his previous talks. In each one he introduced us to an entire new set of ideas, often based on recent developments in cognitive science or related fields, and applying a social cognition analysis in new and enlightening ways. His range was impressive: mental representations of persons and groups, intergroup emotions, socially situated cognition, active vs. passive perceivers, distributed social cognition, embodied cognition—Eliot's research has informed and educated us on all of these topics. In particular, his long-time collaboration with Diane Mackie on Intergroup Emotions Theory has been seminal and invigorating, successfully integrating social identity constructs with the self-appraisal tradition to explore and generate new ideas and research on self-understanding and intergroup relations, including stereotypes and prejudice. The creativity of Eliot's mind is manifest in all of this work and has opened new doors on many fronts. Eliot Smith clearly deserves a place on the Heritage Wall.  

• – Dave Hamilton

Congratulations, Eliot, on a well-deserved honor! Joining your "scuzzy" group back in the early 90s as a grad student was one of the best decisions in my life! I learned so much from you directly and indirectly, as a role model. You had a major influence on my development as a scientist and as a person in general. I'll always be grateful for your support, guidance, and contributions to the field. Thanks again! Cheers! (For anyone wondering: Scuzzy = SCSI = Social Cognition and Social Identity :-))

• – Jay Jackson

If you are lucky enough to spend time with Eliot, you know why we are celebrating his legacy to social psychology. Ideas bubble up—and his ideas have had a dramatic and lasting impact on almost every substantive area of the discipline. Complex problems are cut down to size by applying rigorous analytic methods—and if the methods aren't sufficient, new methods—network analysis, agent-based modeling—are introduced and developed. He offers opinions judiciously, not judgmentally—a quality that served him well as editor of both our premier theoretical (PSPR) and our premier empirical (JPSP) journal, among innumerable other ways he has served us all.  And then there's Eliot's "people impact." Everyone knows him first as a great listener, and then, before you know it, a wise mentor and a generous collaborator. And if you're super lucky, as I have been for over 30 years, you get to have him as a treasured friend as well.

• – Diane Mackie

Thank you for being a second mentor, for always looking to include and promote young scholars, and for modeling programmatic work and theoretical integration and innovation.

• – Angela Maitner

I know many people will write about Eliot's numerous contributions to the field. I instead want to talk about how Eliot impacted me personally. As my mentor, I always appreciated Eliot's genuine kindness, patience, and immense knowledge of the field. I will always look back at my time at Purdue working with Eliot with fondness. 

• – Daniel Miller

I like to think that Eliot and I were in the same cohort because we moved to Bloomington and joined the faculty at Indiana University the same year (2003). But, of course, he was a senior and very well-known social psychologist and I was a rookie who had just finished grad school. Despite this gap, or maybe because of it, Eliot was very kind and supportive in my early career. He invited me to his home for dinner, gave me feedback on my work, and was always available when I stopped by his office with a question. I remember him lamenting once that there was a very strong norm to keep your office door open at IU. I took advantage of that by popping in more than a few times and he was always patient and helpful. Even after I left IU for Stanford a few years later, Eliot played a big role in my career. He invited me to join his editorial team as an Associate Editor at JPSP, which I did, and he was incredibly supportive in that role. Eliot, many thanks for your mentorship, and congrats on this wonderful honor!    

• – Zakary Tormala

Eliot was one of the best mentors possible. Eliot’s interest areas spanned from those more sociological in nature to our more cognitively oriented ideas.  His breadth of knowledge was always (and still is) amazing.  Amazingly, that breadth of knowledge was always matched with depth of knowledge.  Thus, no matter my interests, Eliot was always there with tremendous guidance.  Beyond that, he was simply fun to talk ideas with. Over time, Eliot changed from being a great mentor to being a great friend.  I could always count on Eliot for truly fun and insightful conversations on almost any topic. Everyone should have an Eliot in their life. Smart, chill, and interested in almost any topic.    

• – Michael Zarate