Tuesdays with Phil: A Reflection on the Life, Career and Legacy of Phil Shaver

 

 

Phil Shaver is the 2019 SPSP Annual Convention Legacy Honoree. The Legacy program is designed to honor luminary figures in social and personality psychology and trace the impact of the scholar's seminal contribution to contemporary work. 

 

In Phil’s case, this is easy. What started in 1987 as a couple of studies in JPSP, based on a love quiz in a local newspaper, is today a multi-field phenomenon that has generated close to 17,000 publications, multiple therapies and interventions, and hordes of followers.   

 

If you’d ask Phil, this is the outcome of a series of coincidences and him following where luck threw him. Born Phillip R. Shaver on September 7, 1944 in Iowa, Phil grew up playing football. He was, as anyone who knows him would guess, a quarterback, and could have gone beyond high school to a collegiate or even professional career. 

 

Luckily for us (and his grey matter), his dad forced him to quit football after his 3rd or perhaps 4th concussion (he can’t remember which one). So instead of becoming a professional football player, Phil completed his bachelor’s degree at Wesleyan University, and his PhD at the University of Michigan, working with two other legends Robert Zajonc and Melvin Manis. 

 

Instead of continuing in the way of his famous mentors studying attitudes and social judgment, Phil  began his career researching loneliness, emotions, and close relationships. Following the opportunities he was given, in one of the many ‘stops’ along his way (Phil was on the faculty of Columbia University, New York University, University of Denver, SUNY at Buffalo, and UC Davis), he met Cindy Hazan who became his grad student. 

 

Phil and Cindy were asked to create a love quiz for a local newspaper. Up until this point, adult attachment —the topic we all know Phil for — was not yet on his radar. But Cindy was familiar with the Ainsworth typology of attachment in children and suggested they use it. Sitting together at the office, they began translating the taxonomy of child attachment into an adult attachment style measure based on their co-workers and other people they knew. 

 

The results of this love quiz, which were later turned into a JPSP paper about romantic love as an attachment process, have transformed the field of close relationships. The article is one of JPSP’s most highly cited articles, with more than 5600 cites. 

 

Its influence, however, was not confined to JPSP readers. The reason that SPSP celebrates Phil’s legacy is due to the enormous impact his work has had in multiple domains and disciplines. From social and personality psychology, through industrial and organizational, and on to clinical psychology—thousands of books and papers describing how attachment processes shape our development, emotional experiences, relationships, and many other life experiences and aspects have been published.

 

I was fortunate to spend my Tuesdays (sometimes Fridays and/or Saturdays and Sundays too) with Phil when he was my postdoc mentor at UC Davis. His vast knowledge, availability, responsiveness, and skills have been crucial to my development as an independent scholar and for my early career success. Phil devoted incredible time and energy to our working relationship, making sure that I’d be able to fulfill my potential and obtain my career goals. 

 

Each week we had our meeting, where for a few hours at a time, we discussed everything and anything from research designs, to politics, to movies (which he didn’t watch, but nonetheless read the reviews) to life in general. These were the best (and sometimes the worst) hours of my week. A well-read and masterful writer, Phil taught me a lot, but perhaps more importantly, used his ‘tough love’ to get the best out of me. 

 

What he did for me, he did for many others, including complete strangers (I still remember being amazed as he completely edited a paper we were reviewing for a journal, giving the author some career advice along the way). Phil is one of those rare researchers who, while being highly successful in his own right, is completely and unselfishly dedicated to the success and well-being of others around him and the filed. That is his legacy.