Scholar Explores Concept of ‘Value’ at UA Psychology Department’s Annual Harold Basowitz Memorial Lecture

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Dr. E. Tory Higgins, the Stanley Schachter Professor of Psychology, professor of business and director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia University, will deliver the annual Harold Basowitz Memorial Lecture at 6:30 p.m. Friday, April 11, at 208 Gordon Palmer Hall on The University of Alabama campus.

UA’s psychology department hosts the lecture, which is free and open to the public.

Higgins’ lecture is titled “Where Does Value Come From?” His research interests include motivation and cognition, judgment and decision making, self and affect, social development and social communication.

Higgins is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a recipient of Columbia’s Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. His honors include a MERIT Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Thomas M. Ostrom Award in Social Cognition, the Donald T. Campbell Award for Outstanding Contributions to Social Psychology, the Lifetime Contribution Award from the International Society for Self and Identity, the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions.

The Basowitz lecture is sponsored by UA’s psychology department in memory of Basowitz, who came to UA in 1940 and remained until called into military service. Basowitz returned to Tuscaloosa in 1946 and received his undergraduate degree from UA in 1947. He then went on to complete his doctoral degree in clinical psychology at Princeton in 1951.

The psychology department is part of the College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.