Leading Expert in Persuasion to Deliver Basowitz Lecture at UA

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dr. Robert Cialdini, an internationally recognized authority on influence, persuasion, negotiation and compliance, will deliver the annual Harold Basowitz Memorial Lecture at 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 25, in room 208 of Gordon Palmer Hall on The University of Alabama campus.

The lecture, hosted by UA’s pyschology department, is free and open to the public.

Cialdini, whose is lecture is titled “The Power of Social Versus Economic Factors in Spurring Behavior Change,” is regents’ professor emeritus of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University. He is president of Influence at Work, an international consulting, planning and training organization, and he is author of the books “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” and “Influence: Science and Practice.”

He received his doctorate from the University of North Carolina in 1970 and post doctoral training from Columbia University. His career focus on the science of influence has earned him an international reputation and has made him the most cited living social psychologist.

The Harold Basowitz Memorial Lecture is sponsored by the UA department of psychology 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.

Basowitz went on to complete his doctoral degree in clinical psychology at Princeton in 1951. His distinguished career included administrative roles at the National Institute of Mental Health and professor of psychology for many years at New York University. Basowitz’s lifelong friend, Dr. Irving Alexander, is the donor of the Basowitz endowment.

The department of psychology is part of UA’s 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.