In Honor Of…Paul Rozin, PhD
Honoring scientists who have made important and lasting contributions to the sciences of mind, brain, and behavior.
Paul Rozin, PhD
Professor of Psychology
University of Pennsylvania
Paul Rozin is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned a B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1956. As a student of Jean Mayer at Harvard University, he received his Ph.D. in Biology and Psychology in 1961. After two years as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s School of Public Health, he joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Rozin is a member of the Society of Experimental Psychologists, has twice been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, was a visiting Scholar for Phi Beta Kappa, and a Visiting Scholar for one year at the Russell Sage Foundation. He has been honored for his research contributions as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. He was the editor of the journal Appetite for ten years.
Rozin has made a career of asking important questions that spark whole research literatures following from his work. As Rozin himself put it, “I open up fields rather than mine them.” His approach to research is informed by his orientation to understanding human psychology. As he notes, “I’m more interested in the process of knowing the nature of science and scholarship, rather than the facts: How do we advance? What does it mean to find something out? How do we get evidence? How do we make that evidence into a theory?”
Rozin’s early research examined food selection in animals, the acquisition of fundamental reading skills, and the neuropsychology of amnesia. This work moved into research on human food choice, considered from biological, psychological, and anthropological perspectives. His work on questions related to the psychological significance of flavorings placed on foods in different cuisines, the cultural evolution of cuisine, the development of food aversions, the development of food preferences, family influences in preference development, body image, the acquisition of liking for chili pepper, chocolate craving, and attitudes to meat has been enormously influential. Rozin’s wide-ranging interest in puzzles of human psychology has also led to meaningful contributions to work on the emotion of disgust, the entry of food issues (e.g., meat, fat) into the moral domain in modern American culture, French-American differences in the food domain, attitudes to recycled water, the psychology of music, and the nature of remembered pleasure. He has long been dedicated to cross-cultural inquiry in his research, having conducted studies in France, Japan and India, as well as the United States.
Individuals Honoring Paul Rozin:
Jonathan Baron, University of Pennsylvania
Laura Caistor
Amelie Davidson
Angela Duckworth
Nicole Eberhart, RAND Corporation
Lori Ebert
Bennett Galef
Shreyans Goenka, Cornell University
Jonathan Haidt, New York University Stern School of Business
Sumio Imada, Hiroshima Shudo University
James McClelland, Stanford University
Barbara Mellers, University of Pennsylvania
Morris Moscovitch, University of Toronto
J. Bruce Overmier, University of Minnesota
Willard Rodgers, University of Michigan
Edward Royzman, University of Pennsylvania
Matthew Ruby, La Trobe University
Deborah Schrager
Jon Schull, e-NABLE.org
Sydney Scott, Washington University in St. Louis
Jennifer Stellar, University of Toronto
Sharon Wolf, University of Pennsylvania
*Amy Wrzesniewski, Yale University
* FABBS would like to thank Dr. Amy Wrzesniewski for nominating Dr. Lewis for this honor and for leading the effort.
