Five Ohio State professors were named AAAS fellows, with three coming from the psychology department. Credit: Jack Westerheide | Managing Editor for Design

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is apparently an Ohio State fan.

Or so it seems.

That’s because five Ohio State professors were recently elected as new AAAS fellows. Three of the professors are from the Department of Psychology. When they received the email in late November saying they’d been nominated, it came as a surprise to some of the Ohio State professors.

“I actually didn’t even know I’d been nominated,” Ellen Peters, a professor of psychology and one of the five nominees, said.

Colleagues of Peters in the psychology department who were also elected as fellows are Russell Fazio and Jennifer Crocker.

Peters was primarily nominated for her research on two topics: the first being her study of psychological mechanisms on how we judge and make decisions; the second being her research in affect, emotion and numeracy, which is similar to literacy but with numbers. She was also cited on her study of “translational science.”

“It’s when you translate basic science into some more applied context,” Peters explained. “I worked a lot with our Food and Drug Administration and the National Cancer Institute, looking at how do you take what we know in psychology in order to try to improve things for people, help patients make better decisions.”

Charles Emery, the psychology department chair, spoke highly of the three professors elected as fellows.

“Dr. Peters’ work is in the realm of decision psychology and investigation factors that in particular may influence how people make decisions about health care choices,” he said.

Fazio was elected “for outstanding research and theorizing about the multiple processes by which attitudes form and then influence attention, categorization, judgment and behavior,” according to a press release from Ohio State.

“Dr. Fazio does interesting studies looking at how attitudes about people or events around us can be affected by factors that we’re not consciously aware of,” Emery explained. “There’s implicit factors that will affect the way that we engage with or perceive a situation.”

Crocker was cited in the press release as contributing “cutting-edge research that continually pushed social psychology forward.” This included research on stereotypes, stigma, self-esteem and compassion. She was also recognized for her “extensive professional leadership.”

“Some of the work that is relevant to college students is how individuals are considering their self image or maintaining their self image in the way that they interact and respond to people around them,” Emery said. “Some of her work involves studies of college roommates and how those relationships play out in terms of self awareness and self esteem.”

Emery also emphasized what an accomplishment it is for the psychology department to employ three of the five elected fellows.

“I think the fact that we had three out of the five form our department this year is indicative of the quality of our faculty. We have eminent scholars, and the three that were chosen are all doing cutting edge research,” Emery said. It’s great for our students too, that means that they’re taking classes from faculty that are now nationally visible.”

The other two professors elected, Juan Alfonzo and John Casterline, are professors of microbiology and sociology, respectively. Alfonzo was elected for “distinguished contributions to the field of molecular parasitology and RNA biochemistry [and] using cellular and biochemical approaches to elucidate mechanisms of tRNA editing and modification.”

Casterline had “distinguished contributions to the field of social demography.” He specifically studied “fertility, family planning and the demographic transition in developing nations in Africa.”

The AAAS elected 416 new fellows in 2018. All five professors elected from Ohio State will attend a ceremony in February 2019 in Washington, D.C. to honor their accomplishments.

Ohio State is now home to more than 100 AAAS fellows, an important organization that has been around for more than 100 years.

“The AAAS is dedicated to advancing science and people’s awareness of science in our society, which, in this day and age, is critically important,” Emery said. “Part of their mission is to get the word out about science and the relevance of science to all of our daily lives.”