Kay Deaux is the winner of the 2016 Distinguished Scholar Award. In her address at the 2017 SPSP Annual Convention, Kay expressed her gratitude for being selected, offered thanks to many people who supported and influenced her professionally, and explained why she took the path she did. She described some of her professional collaborations and what she gained from each, and noted the importance of keeping science and reason – and relevance – at the forefront of social and personality psychology, and of joining with others who share our values. View her remarks in their entirety.

In an interview with Kay, SPSP asked how she came to the research areas of gender and ethnic and immigrant identities, why she believes involvement with professional organizations is important, about memorable advice she’s received, and to share some of her other perspectives on the field. In the interview, Kay discusses the importance of situations and circumstances, advises new researchers to follow their passions, recommends collaboration with other disciplines, and more.

SPSP: You’ve expanded the field’s understanding of gender and ethnic and immigrant identities.  How did you come to these research areas?

Kay: Exemplifying a basic tenet of social psychology, situations have often influenced what scientific paths I have chosen.  My work on gender began in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the feminist movement put a spotlight on issues of gender discrimination and unequal treatment.  My first work in this area was a simple exercise in scientific validity:  did findings based on male participants and male stimulus characters generalize to other gender combinations? The simple answer:  no!  Quickly I moved into studies of performance evaluation and attributional explanations for the equivalent performance of women and men in both laboratory and field settings.  In a kind of capstone paper in my gender work, Brenda Major and I developed a framework for the analysis of gendered behaviors, stressing the fluidity and situational determinants of “sex differences”. 

Recognizing that gender identity could be more or less important in different circumstances led me to think about other identities that are also central to people’s self-definitions.  Ethnic identity became more salient to me when I moved from West Lafayette, Indiana to New York City in 1987. In New York, a classic gateway city for immigrants, I became fascinated with the ways in which social psychological thinking could bring important perspectives to bear on some key issues in immigration (a thriving field of academic study in the social sciences, but one rarely considered by psychologists). Questions of ethnic stereotypes and their consequences for academic performance, of the multiplicity of identity and the ways in which immigrants negotiate possible alternatives—these are the issues that have engaged me for the past two decades.

SPSP: You’ve been active in many professional organizations.  Why do you think involvement with professional organizations matters?

Kay: As sung by the character of Aaron Burr and the cast of the amazing musical Hamilton, “you’ve got to be in the room where it happens”.  In the scientific professional version of civic engagement, being active in organizations that matter to you allows you to introduce new ideas, shape the conversation, and sometimes influence the course of action than an organization takes.  A couple of personal examples…. Before SPSP’s first stand-alone convention, Mark Snyder and I joined together, as two successive presidents of SPSP, to create a one-day event for SPSP members under the umbrella of the APS convention.  We started small—but look at us now! 

In more recent work with the Russell Sage Foundation, I have been able to bring more social psychologists to the table, facilitating their access to grant funding and shaping some of the agenda of RSF. If you believe in the goals of an organization, then getting involved and helping the organization achieve those goals seems a no-brainer to me!

SPSP: What’s a piece of professional advice you’ve received that was very memorable?

Kay: Early in my career, when I was just beginning to do research on gender issues, a friendly colleague offered his advice on the course I should take.  If you are interested in gender, he suggested, make it a minor sideline.  Choose instead to address a more “mainstream”, widely accepted line of research if you want to get promoted and get ahead. 

As anyone familiar with my record knows, I disregarded that advice.  And to people now deciding what to do, I would give exactly the opposite advice:  follow your interests and your passions when you choose a line of research.  Those concerns will stimulate your curiosity, motivate your pursuits, and increase your persistence to find out the answers to the questions you personally believe are important.

SPSP: What’s one thing that you wish other people knew about the field?

Kay: I’m not original here, but it’s always worth repeating:  situations and circumstances are far more influential than most people outside of our field recognize.  This general principle can be extended from the immediate laboratory environment to the larger social structures, and a greater recognition of this influence would counter forces such as essentialism and assumptions that change is not possible.

SPSP: How would you like to see our field change or evolve in the future?

Kay: Actually, I think social psychology is in a pretty good place these days.  Compared to the field that I entered 50 years ago, there is much more variety in methods, sophistication and complexity in conceptualizing issues, and greater appreciation of the value of work outside the laboratory.  If I were to wish for more, I would encourage people not to rely solely on “ingroup” knowledge and practice as they develop their research programs, but to also look to other disciplines for insights and skills that can be productively incorporated into one’s own agenda.