Adam Galinsky named Ver Steeg Fellow

5/17/2011 - Adam Galinsky, the Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor of Ethics and Decision in Management, has been awarded the Dorothy Ann and Clarence L. Ver Steeg Distinguished Research Fellowship.

He is the sixth scholar to receive the Ver Steeg fellowship, the university’s first endowed award for excellence in research by a faculty member.

Galinsky’s teaching and research focus on leadership, negotiations, decision making, innovation and the development of organizational values and culture.

The Ver Steeg award provides each recipient with a research grant of $30,000 and is designed to support scholarship that enhances the reputation of Northwestern, nationally and internationally.

Widely cited by the media, Galinsky’s research explores a wide range of topics relating to how individuals make sense of and participate in their social and organizational worlds. He has shown how power affects basic psychological processes; why low-status consumers overspend; how first offers impact negotiations and auctions; why people develop superstitions; the ways in which people find meaning in their lives; why living abroad makes people more creative; and the most effective strategies for reducing stereotyping and prejudice.

He has published more than 110 scientific articles, chapters and teaching cases in the fields of management and social psychology.

A study that he co-authored in the April issue of Psychological Science, for example, confirms that personal control is central to happiness, especially in the workplace.

A Forbes story offered a pithy summary of the study: “What they found was that it wasn’t salary that kept the cogs of the country working happily — it was how much personal control they felt over their day-to-day tasks.”

The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker and ABC News also are among the major media that have featured Galinsky’s work.

Galinsky has received multiple best-paper awards and has been invited to present lectures at universities throughout North America, Europe and Asia. He is also a member of the editorial boards of several major journals.

Each year Northwestern’s provost identifies a broad academic field from which nominations for the Ver Steeg award are solicited from school deans.

The previous Ver Steeg award winners are:

• Dorothy Roberts, the Kirkland & Ellis Professor at Northwestern University School of Law and faculty fellow at the University’s Institute for Policy Research;
• Harold Kung, professor of chemical and biological engineering, McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science;
• J. Larry Jameson, M.D., vice president for medical affairs and Lewis Landsberg Dean, Feinberg School of Medicine;
• Barbara Newman, professor of English, religion and classics and John Evans Professor of the Latin Language and Literature, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences;
• and George C. Schatz, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry, Weinberg College, and professor of chemical and biological engineering, McCormick School.