Author Description

About the Author John T. Cacioppo is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor and Director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago. He is a past President of several scientific societies, including the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Social Neuroscience, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Society for Psychophysiological Research, and a past Chair of the Psychology Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Among the awards he has received are the Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences, the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, a MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health, the Scientific Impact Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions from the Society for Psychophysiological Research, and the Campbell Award and the Theoretical Innovation Prize from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Cacioppo is a Member of the President's Committee on the National Medal of Science; the Chair of the Board of Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences at the National Research Council and a Member of the National Science Foundation Advisory Committee for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate; and a former Member of both the Council for the NIH Center for Scientific Review and the Council for the National Institute on Aging. Laura A. Freberg (Ph.D., UCLA) is Professor of Psychology at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where she teaches courses in Introductory Psychology, Biological Psychology, and Sensation and Perception. Laura's teaching career began when she taught her first college course at Pasadena City College at the age of 23. To better understand the needs of the online education community, she also teaches a variety of psycholog