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| Shelley Taylor | |
|---|---|
| Name | Shelley Taylor |
| Birth date | 1946 |
| Birth place | Beverly Hills, California |
| Alma mater | University of California, Los Angeles; University of Michigan |
| Occupation | Social psychologist; professor |
| Institutions | University of California, Los Angeles; Princeton University; University of Michigan |
| Known for | Social cognition; interpersonal processes; cognitive adaptation |
| Awards | American Psychological Association awards; National Academy of Sciences membership |
Shelley Taylor is an American social psychologist known for pioneering work on social cognition, interpersonal processes, and the psychology of health and coping. Her research has influenced fields across psychology, medicine, and public health, informing empirical work on defensive attribution, cognitive adaptation, and communal versus exchange relationships. She has held faculty positions at major research universities and received numerous honors from professional societies.
Born in Beverly Hills, California, Taylor completed undergraduate studies at the University of California, Los Angeles where she was influenced by faculty active in experimental social psychology. She pursued graduate training at the University of Michigan, working with mentors engaged in social cognition and personality research linked to scholars at Stanford University, Harvard University, and Yale University. Her doctoral work integrated methods drawn from social psychology labs at University of California, Los Angeles and quantitative traditions represented at University of Michigan, situating her within networks that included researchers from Columbia University and University of Pennsylvania.
Taylor began her academic career as a faculty member at institutions such as the University of Michigan and later held appointments at Princeton University and University of California, Los Angeles. Her teaching and mentorship connected graduate students to research programs at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and collaborations with investigators at the National Institutes of Health and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She served on editorial boards for journals associated with the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science, contributing to peer review networks spanning Psychological Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Health Psychology.
Taylor's empirical program advanced understanding of cognitive and interpersonal processes by investigating how people process social information and respond to adverse events. Her studies addressed phenomena investigated by scholars at Stanford University and Harvard University—including attributional bias, coping, and self-regulation—and drew on methodologies used at the National Academy of Sciences symposia. She collaborated with investigators at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Michigan on research linking psychosocial factors to physiological outcomes measured in labs that partner with the National Institutes of Health. Her translational work informed programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and clinical research at the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins Hospital addressing stress-related health outcomes.
Taylor published influential empirical papers in outlets such as Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Psychological Bulletin, and contributed chapters for handbooks edited by scholars affiliated with Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. Her collaborative networks included researchers from Columbia University, Yale University, Duke University, and University of Chicago, fostering interdisciplinary projects that bridged social psychology, behavioral medicine, and neuroscience centers at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Taylor formulated and developed theoretical frameworks that guided subsequent empirical literatures. Notably, she articulated the cognitive model of "cognitive adaptation" describing how individuals create meaning, regain mastery, and enhance self-esteem following traumatic or threatening events—a model that interfaces with work by scholars at Harvard University and Stanford University on coping and resilience. She also contributed to delineating "tend-and-befriend" responses, a social neuroendocrine model that complements fight-or-flight theories advanced in classic research at Columbia University and Yale University. Taylor's analyses of communal versus exchange relationships intersect with theoretical traditions from University of California, Berkeley and University of Pennsylvania schools of social exchange and interdependence theory. These models have been integrated into research programs at the National Institutes of Health and courses taught at Princeton University and UCLA.
Taylor's scholarship has been recognized by major professional organizations. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and has received lifetime achievement awards from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the Association for Psychological Science. She has been honored with fellowships from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has received awards from the American Psychological Association for distinguished scientific contributions. Her work has been cited in policy reports authored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and used in curricular materials at institutions such as Harvard University and Princeton University.
Taylor's personal life has intersected with academic communities at University of Michigan and University of California, Los Angeles, where colleagues and former students sustained collaborative programs and ongoing mentorship. Her legacy includes a generation of social psychologists now active at institutions including Stanford University, Yale University, Columbia University, Duke University, and University of Chicago, and a corpus of work taught in graduate seminars across the United States and internationally at universities such as Oxford University and Cambridge University. Her theoretical contributions continue to shape empirical investigations in labs at the National Institutes of Health, clinical programs at the Mayo Clinic, and public health initiatives at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Category:American social psychologists Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences