Alice M. Isen
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Alice M. Isen was an American psychologist and Professor of Psychology and of Marketing at
Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
. A prominent and widely published scholar, her research concerned the influence of "positive affect" on social interaction, thought processes, and decision making, including applications to organizational behavior, medical decision making, doctor-patient interaction, issues in services marketing, and issues related to brand equity and loyalty.


Background

Isen received her Ph.D. from
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
in 1968, an MA in Psychology also from Stanford in 1966, and a BA in Russian Language and Literature from the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
in 1963. According to Fredrickson:
Isen’s dissertation, chaired by
Walter Mischel Walter Mischel (; February 22, 1930 – September 12, 2018) was an Austrian-born American psychologist specializing in personality theory and social psychology. He was the Robert Johnston Niven Professor of Humane Letters in the Department o ...
and published in the ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'', tested her intuition-based hypotheses regarding the “warm glow of success.” Using clever behavioral measures, she found that people randomly assigned to experience success were more generous, helpful, and attentive to others, relative to those randomly assigned to experience failure or to receive no performance feedback whatsoever.
She taught at the
University of Maryland, Baltimore County The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is a public research university in Baltimore County, Maryland. It has a fall 2022 enrollment of 13,991 students, 61 undergraduate majors, over 92 graduate programs (38 master, 25 doctoral, ...
1972–1989, then joined Cornell as the SC Johnson Professor of Marketing and Professor of Psychology. Alice served as Editor of the peer-reviewed
Springer Springer or springers may refer to: Publishers * Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag. ** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...
journal Motivation and Emotion and a member of the editorial board of other psychology and marketing journals, and a member of the executive committee of the Society for Consumer Psychology. She died on February 29, 2012.


Works

Isen is known for her work on positive emotions. Along with a group of researchers she conducted a series of experiments that show how these emotions have effects 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 ...
. Isen found that positive emotions facilitate creativity, successful problem-solving and negotiation, as well as thoroughness and efficiency during the decision-making process. Her work on this particular area has been applied to different fields such as medical diagnosis (e.g. facilitating
memory retrieval Recall in memory refers to the mental process of retrieval of information from the past. Along with encoding and storage, it is one of the three core processes of memory. There are three main types of recall: free recall, cued recall and serial ...
, organizational efficiency).


Major recent publications


Peer-reviewed journal articles

*Erez, A. & Isen, A.M. (2002). "The Influence of Positive Affect on Components of Expectancy Motivation."
Journal of Applied Psychology The ''Journal of Applied Psychology'' is a monthly, peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Psychological Association. The journal emphasizes the publication of original investigations that contribute new knowledge and understandin ...
, 87(6): 1055–1067. *Isen, A. M. (2002). "Missing in Action in the AIM: Positive Affect's Facilitation of Cognitive Flexibility, Innovation, and Problem Solving."
Psychological Inquiry The ''Psychological Inquiry'' (''PI'') is a quarterly psychology journal published by Taylor & Francis. It aims to be a forum for the discussion of theory and meta-theory, primarily in social psychology and personality. It aims to publish ideas an ...
13(1): 57–65. *Isen, A. M. (2001). "An Influence of Positive Affect on Decision Making in Complex Situations: Theoretical Issues with Practical Implications."
Journal of Consumer Psychology The ''Journal of Consumer Psychology'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering psychology as it relates to consumer behavior. It was established in 1992 and is published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the Society for Consumer Psy ...
11(2): 75–85. *Isen, A. M. (2000). "Some Perspectives on Positive Affect and Self-Regulation."
Psychological Inquiry The ''Psychological Inquiry'' (''PI'') is a quarterly psychology journal published by Taylor & Francis. It aims to be a forum for the discussion of theory and meta-theory, primarily in social psychology and personality. It aims to publish ideas an ...
11(3): 184–187. Incompleto


Book chapters

*Isen, A.M. & Erez, A. (2006). Some measurement issues in the study of affect. In A. D. Ong and M.H.M. van Dulmen (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Methods in Positive Psychology (pp. 250–265). NY: Oxford. *Isen, A.M. (2004). "Some Perspectives on Positive Feelings and Emotions: Positive Affect Facilitates Thinking and Problem Solving." In Manstead, A.S.R., N. Frijda, and A. Fischer (Eds.) Feelings and Emotions: The Amsterdam Symposium. (pp. 263–281). NY: Cambridge. *Isen, A. M. "Positive Affect as a Source of Human Strength." in The Psychology of Human Strengths. L. G. Aspinwall and U. Staudinger. *Isen, A.M. & Labroo, A.A. (2003). "Some Ways in Which Positive Affect Facilitates Decision Making and Judgment." In S. Schneider & J. Shanteau (Eds.) Emerging Perspectives on Judgment and Decision Research. NY, Cambridge: 365–393. *Isen, A.M. (2003). "Positive Affect, Systematic Cognitive Processing, and Behavior: Toward Integration of Affect, Cognition, and Motivation. In F. Dansereau and F.J. Yammarino (Eds.) Multi-level Issues in Organizational Behavior and Strategy, (p.55-62). Oxford, UK: JAI/Elsevier Science. *Isen, A. M. (2002). "A Role for Neuropsychology in Understanding the Facilitating Influence of Positive Affect on Social Behavior and Cognitive Processes." Handbook of Positive Psychology. C. R. Snyder and S. J. Lopez. Oxford, England and New York, NY, Oxford University Press: Chapter 38: 528–540. *Isen, A. M. (2000). "Positive Affect and Decision Making." Handbook of Emotions. 2nd Edition, M. Lewis and J. M. Haviland-Jones. New York, Guilford


References


External links


department list at Cornell
{{DEFAULTSORT:Isen, Alice M. American women psychologists Cornell University faculty Stanford University alumni University of Pennsylvania alumni Year of birth missing American women academics 2012 deaths 21st-century American women