Timothy DeCamp Wilson is an American social psychologist and writer. He is the Sherrell J. Aston Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia and teaches public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. He is known for his research on self-knowledge and the influence of the unconscious mind on

decision-making In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the Cognition, cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be ...

, preferences and

behavior Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as wel ...

. He is the author of two popular books on psychology, ''Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious'' and ''Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change.''

Career

Wilson is best known for his research on the

adaptive unconscious The adaptive unconscious, first coined by social psychologist Daniel Wegner in 2002, is described as a set of Cognition, mental processes that is able to affect judgement and decision-making, but is out of reach of the conscious mind. It is thought ...

, self-knowledge, and affective forecasting. With Richard Nisbett, Wilson authored one of psychology's most cited papers, "Telling more than we can know verbal reports on mental processes," that demonstrated the difficulty humans have in introspecting on their own mental processes (''

Psychological Review ''Psychological Review'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal that covers psychological theory. It was established by James Mark Baldwin (Princeton University) and James McKeen Cattell (Columbia University) in 1894 as a publication vehi ...

'', 1977, cited 2731 times as of May 22, 2007, according to ISI Web of Knowledge). His longtime collaborator is Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University. Wilson has published two popular press books, ''Strangers to Ourselves'' and ''Redirect'', and co-authored ''Social Psychology,'' an introductory textbook on social psychology. The textbook has been translated into Italian, Polish, Chinese, German, Russian, and Serbian; ''Strangers to Ourselves'' has been translated into Dutch and Japanese, with Chinese and German editions forthcoming. Wilson received a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Hampshire College in 1973 and a PhD in social psychology from the University of Michigan's Department of Psychology in 1977. From 1977 to 1979, he was a faculty member at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

. Since 1979, he has been a faculty member at the University of Virginia. His research has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, and the

Russell Sage Foundation The Russell Sage Foundation is an American non-profit organisation established by Margaret Olivia Sage in 1907 for “the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States.” It was named after her recently deceased husband, rail ...

. In 2009, he was named as a fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His work has received numerous awards, including an All-University Outstanding Teaching Award from the University of Virginia in 2001, as well as the Thomas Jefferson Award for Excellence in Scholarship in 2015. In 2013, he was the recipient of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology's Donald T. Campbell Award, and in 2015 he was named a William James Fellow by the

Association for Psychological Science The Association for Psychological Science (APS), previously the American Psychological Society, is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in ...

. He lives in

Charlottesville, Virginia Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Albemarle County, which surrounds the city, though the two are separate legal entities. It is named after Queen Ch ...

, with his wife, Deirdre Smith. He has two children, Christopher and Leigh.

Bibliography

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Textbooks

Timothy D. Wilson also contributed as an author in co-writing Social Psychology (9th Edition)

Articles in journals

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References

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External links