William Ickes
Encyclopedia
William Ickes is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is a personality and social psychologist who is known primarily for his research on unstructured dyadic interaction. His first major line of research within this tradition concerns the phenomenon of empathic accuracy
("everyday mind reading"). This research is summarized in his 2003 book Everyday Mind Reading: Understanding What Other People Think and Feel. His second major line of research concerns the influence of personal traits and characteristics on people's initial interactions with each other. This research is summarized in his 2009 book Strangers in a Strange Lab: How Personality Shapes Our Initial Encounters with Others.
was also an important professional mentor during this time. Ickes's first academic job was at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
, where he initiated the research on unstructured dyadic interaction that he would continue to do throughout his academic career. After leaving Wisconsin, he taught briefly at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (1979–1982). He returned to Texas in 1982 to begin his employment at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he has been for nearly 30 years. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Washington
in 1992; a Visiting Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury
in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1999; and an International Francqui Chair at Ghent University
and the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, in 2005.
He married Mary Jo Renard in 1967 and they had three sons: Marcus, John, and William (who died at the age of 13).
. The study of empathic accuracy has become an important subfield of two larger fields of study--(1) research on empathy
and (2) research on interpersonal perception
. Much of the available research on this topic is summarized in two books: Empathic Accuracy (1997) and Everyday Mind Reading (2003).
Ickes's books and articles on empathic accuracy
currently comprise about 60 publications. His research has addressed the questions of whether women have greater empathic accuracy than men, whether friends have greater empathic accuracy than strangers, and whether abusive husbands display an impaired ability to "read" their wives' thoughts and feelings. It has also examined the informational sources of empathic accuracy, its motivational aspects, and its role in social support
interactions. His empathic accuracy model, written in collaboration with Jeffry Simpson, is perhaps the most influential theory in this area of research.
, their birth order
, their race/ethnicity, and their physical attractiveness
. They have also examined the effects of various personality traits such as androgyny
, the Big Five personality traits
, shyness
, and self-monitoring.
This research is summarized in Strangers in a Strange Lab (2009).
and Maurice Merleau-Ponty
.
Similarly, Ickes's development of a method for measuring empathic accuracy is only part of his broader contribution to developing methods for the study of naturalistic social cognition. These methods enable the assessment and content analysis of the actual thoughts and feelings that interaction partners report, and permit an exploration of the intersubjective themes that characterize the interactions of different dyad types.
Ickes's interest in personality is also evident in the various personality measures that he and his colleagues have developed. These measures assess the constructs of adherence to conventional morality, internal-external correspondence, self-motivation, social absorption and social individuation, and strength of sense of self. More recently, he and his colleagues have developed other measures to assess the constructs of ego-defensiveness, affect intensity for anger and frustration, and rudeness.
In collaboration with William Schweinle and other colleagues, William Ickes participated in an extensive study of the psychology of maritally aggressive men. Over the course of four studies, Schweinle, Ickes, and their colleagues found that maritally aggressive men are especially inaccurate when inferring their own wives' thoughts and feelings, and that a major source of this deficit is their biased belief that women harbor critical and rejecting thoughts and feelings about their male partners. This biased perception of women as being critical and rejecting appears to help justify the men's marital aggression in their own minds, and it is a bias that they seek to preserve through tactics such as disattending a women's complaints and reacting to such communications with feelings of contempt rather than sympathy. In general, maritally aggressive men appear to be angry, egocentric individuals. For some of these men, marital abuse is the product of a sudden impulse; for others, it is the product of a built-up resentment that has its origin in the biased perception that women harbor critical and rejecting thoughts and feelings about their male partners. These findings have clearcut implications for the treatment of abusive behavior in maritally aggressive men.
Finally, Ickes developed a theory of how people's sex roles (gender roles) affect their behavior and experience in initial interactions. The impact of this theory has so far been quite limited, however, perhaps because it did not receive much attention when the original version of the theory was published in 1981.
Ickes has, to date, about 160 publications, which include books, books chapters, journal articles, commentaries, and reviews. Along with John H. Harvey and Robert F. Kidd, he was a co-editor of the three-volume series New Directions in Attribution Research.
and was inducted into the University of Texas at Arlington's Academy of Distinguished Scholars.
from 1978–1979; as Associate Editor for the Review of Personality and Social Psychology from 1983–1986; and as Associate Editor for the Journal of Research in Personality from 2004-2006. He has also served as a Consulting Editor for Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
(1980–1981), the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior (1988–1992, 1994–1996, and the Review of Personality and Social Psychology (2004–2006). He was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology from 1982-1991.
He has also published several edited (or co-edited) books:
Empathic accuracy
Empathic accuracy is a term in psychology that refers to how accurately one person can infer the thoughts and feelings of another person . It was first introduced in conjunction with a new research method by psychologists William Ickes and William Tooke in 1988...
("everyday mind reading"). This research is summarized in his 2003 book Everyday Mind Reading: Understanding What Other People Think and Feel. His second major line of research concerns the influence of personal traits and characteristics on people's initial interactions with each other. This research is summarized in his 2009 book Strangers in a Strange Lab: How Personality Shapes Our Initial Encounters with Others.
Background
Ickes received his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology in 1973 at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was trained in the social psychology program. His primary research advisor was Robert Wicklund, although Elliot AronsonElliot Aronson
Elliot Aronson is an American psychologist. He is listed among the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th Century, best known for the invention of the Jigsaw Classroom as a method of reducing interethnic hostility and prejudice; cognitive dissonance research, and influential social psychology...
was also an important professional mentor during this time. Ickes's first academic job was at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
, where he initiated the research on unstructured dyadic interaction that he would continue to do throughout his academic career. After leaving Wisconsin, he taught briefly at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (1979–1982). He returned to Texas in 1982 to begin his employment at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he has been for nearly 30 years. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
in 1992; a Visiting Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury
University of Canterbury
The University of Canterbury , New Zealand's second-oldest university, operates its main campus in the suburb of Ilam in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand...
in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1999; and an International Francqui Chair at Ghent University
Ghent University
Ghent University is a Dutch-speaking public university located in Ghent, Belgium. It is one of the larger Flemish universities, consisting of 32,000 students and 7,100 staff members. The current rector is Paul Van Cauwenberge.It was established in 1817 by King William I of the Netherlands...
and the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, in 2005.
He married Mary Jo Renard in 1967 and they had three sons: Marcus, John, and William (who died at the age of 13).
Empathic accuracy (everyday mind reading)
Both alone and in collaboration with various colleagues, Ickes has published widely on the topic of empathic accuracyEmpathic accuracy
Empathic accuracy is a term in psychology that refers to how accurately one person can infer the thoughts and feelings of another person . It was first introduced in conjunction with a new research method by psychologists William Ickes and William Tooke in 1988...
. The study of empathic accuracy has become an important subfield of two larger fields of study--(1) research on empathy
Empathy
Empathy is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings that are being experienced by another sapient or semi-sapient being. Someone may need to have a certain amount of empathy before they are able to feel compassion. The English word was coined in 1909 by E.B...
and (2) research on interpersonal perception
Interpersonal perception
Interpersonal perception is an area of research in social psychology which examines the beliefs that interacting people have about each other. This area differs from social cognition and person perception by being interpersonal rather than intrapersonal, and thus requiring the interaction of at...
. Much of the available research on this topic is summarized in two books: Empathic Accuracy (1997) and Everyday Mind Reading (2003).
Ickes's books and articles on empathic accuracy
Empathic accuracy
Empathic accuracy is a term in psychology that refers to how accurately one person can infer the thoughts and feelings of another person . It was first introduced in conjunction with a new research method by psychologists William Ickes and William Tooke in 1988...
currently comprise about 60 publications. His research has addressed the questions of whether women have greater empathic accuracy than men, whether friends have greater empathic accuracy than strangers, and whether abusive husbands display an impaired ability to "read" their wives' thoughts and feelings. It has also examined the informational sources of empathic accuracy, its motivational aspects, and its role in social support
Social support
Social support can be defined and measured in many ways. It can loosely be defined as feeling that one is cared for by and has assistance available from other people and that one is part of a supportive social network...
interactions. His empathic accuracy model, written in collaboration with Jeffry Simpson, is perhaps the most influential theory in this area of research.
Personality influences on strangers' interactions
Using the unstructured dyadic interaction paradigm, Ickes and his colleagues have explored the influences of many personal characteristics and personality traits on the interactions between strangers. More specifically, they have examined the influences of such personal characteristics as the participants' genderGender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
, their birth order
Birth order
Birth order is defined as a person's rank by age among his or her siblings. Birth order is often believed to have a profound and lasting effect on psychological development...
, their race/ethnicity, and their physical attractiveness
Physical attractiveness
Physical attractiveness refers to a person's physical traits which are perceived to be aesthetically pleasing or beautiful. The term often implies sexual attractiveness or desirability, but can also be distinct from the two; for example, humans may regard the young as attractive for various...
. They have also examined the effects of various personality traits such as androgyny
Androgyny
Androgyny is a term derived from the Greek words ανήρ, stem ανδρ- and γυνή , referring to the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics...
, the Big Five personality traits
Big Five personality traits
In contemporary psychology, the "Big Five" factors of personality are five broad domains or dimensions of personality which are used to describe human personality....
, shyness
Shyness
In humans, shyness is a social psychology term used to describe the feeling of apprehension, lack of comfort, or awkwardness experienced when a person is in proximity to, approaching, or being approached by other people, especially in new situations or with unfamiliar people...
, and self-monitoring.
This research is summarized in Strangers in a Strange Lab (2009).
Other contributions
In addition to his work on empathic accuracy, Ickes has made a broader contribution to the study of intersubjective social cognition.http://www.uta.edu/psychology/faculty/ickes/vita.htm#isc His 1994 article with Richard Gonzalez was the first to draw a strong distinction between subjective social cognition, which occurs entirely in one person's head and concerns either imagined, reflected-upon, or anticipated interaction, and intersubjective social cognition, which occurs during an actual, ongoing social interaction and involves the intersubjective experience of the interaction partners. Subsequent papers have elaborated this distinction, which owes much to the existentialist influence of writers such as Alfred SchützAlfred Schütz
Alfred Schütz was an Austrian social scientist, whose work bridged sociological and phenomenological traditions to form a social phenomenology, and who is gradually achieving recognition as one of the foremost philosophers of social science of the [twentieth] century.-Life:Schütz was born in...
and Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Karl Marx, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir...
.
Similarly, Ickes's development of a method for measuring empathic accuracy is only part of his broader contribution to developing methods for the study of naturalistic social cognition. These methods enable the assessment and content analysis of the actual thoughts and feelings that interaction partners report, and permit an exploration of the intersubjective themes that characterize the interactions of different dyad types.
Ickes's interest in personality is also evident in the various personality measures that he and his colleagues have developed. These measures assess the constructs of adherence to conventional morality, internal-external correspondence, self-motivation, social absorption and social individuation, and strength of sense of self. More recently, he and his colleagues have developed other measures to assess the constructs of ego-defensiveness, affect intensity for anger and frustration, and rudeness.
In collaboration with William Schweinle and other colleagues, William Ickes participated in an extensive study of the psychology of maritally aggressive men. Over the course of four studies, Schweinle, Ickes, and their colleagues found that maritally aggressive men are especially inaccurate when inferring their own wives' thoughts and feelings, and that a major source of this deficit is their biased belief that women harbor critical and rejecting thoughts and feelings about their male partners. This biased perception of women as being critical and rejecting appears to help justify the men's marital aggression in their own minds, and it is a bias that they seek to preserve through tactics such as disattending a women's complaints and reacting to such communications with feelings of contempt rather than sympathy. In general, maritally aggressive men appear to be angry, egocentric individuals. For some of these men, marital abuse is the product of a sudden impulse; for others, it is the product of a built-up resentment that has its origin in the biased perception that women harbor critical and rejecting thoughts and feelings about their male partners. These findings have clearcut implications for the treatment of abusive behavior in maritally aggressive men.
Finally, Ickes developed a theory of how people's sex roles (gender roles) affect their behavior and experience in initial interactions. The impact of this theory has so far been quite limited, however, perhaps because it did not receive much attention when the original version of the theory was published in 1981.
Ickes has, to date, about 160 publications, which include books, books chapters, journal articles, commentaries, and reviews. Along with John H. Harvey and Robert F. Kidd, he was a co-editor of the three-volume series New Directions in Attribution Research.
Academic honors and awards
In 1997, Ickes received the Berscheid/Hatfield Award for Distinguished Mid-Career Achievement from the International Network on Personal Relationships and a Certificate of Commendation from the American Psychological Foundation. In 1998, he became a Fellow of the American Psychological Society and was a co-recipient (with Jeffry A. Simpson and Tami Blackstone) of a New Contribution Award from the International Society for the Study of Personal Relationships. In 2002, he became a Fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and received the Distinguished Record of Research Award from the University of Texas at Arlington. In 2005, he was recognized as an International Francqui Chair by Belgium's Francqui FoundationFrancqui Foundation
The Francqui Foundation was founded in 1932 by Emile Francqui and Herbert Hoover with the goal "to further the development of higher education and scientific research in Belgium". The foundation is a private foundation under the legal from of a Belgian "Institution of Public Utility"...
and was inducted into the University of Texas at Arlington's Academy of Distinguished Scholars.
Editorial experience
Ickes served as a Topic Editor for the Journal of Personality and Social PsychologyJournal of Personality and Social Psychology
The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology is a monthly psychology journal of the American Psychological Association. It is considered one of the top journals in the fields of social and personality psychology. Its focus is on empirical research reports; however, specialized theoretical,...
from 1978–1979; as Associate Editor for the Review of Personality and Social Psychology from 1983–1986; and as Associate Editor for the Journal of Research in Personality from 2004-2006. He has also served as a Consulting Editor for Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin is a scientific journal published by SAGE Publications for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology...
(1980–1981), the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior (1988–1992, 1994–1996, and the Review of Personality and Social Psychology (2004–2006). He was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology from 1982-1991.
Books
Ickes has published two single-authored books:- Everyday Mind Reading: Understanding What Other People Think and Feel (2003)
- Strangers in a Strange Lab: How Personality Shapes Our Initial Encounters with Others (2009)
He has also published several edited (or co-edited) books:
- Harvey, J., Ickes, W., & Kidd, R. (Eds.) (1976). New directions in attribution research. Vol. 1. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
- Harvey, J., Ickes, W., & Kidd, R. (Eds.) (1978). New directions in attribution research. Vol. 2. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
- Harvey, J., Ickes, W., & Kidd, R. (Eds.) (1981). New directions in attribution research. Vol. 3. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
- Ickes, W., & Knowles, E.S. (Eds.) (1982). Personality, roles, and social behavior. New York: Springer-Verlag.
- Ickes, W. (Ed.) (1985). Compatible and incompatible relationships. New York: Springer-Verlag.
- Duck, S.W., Hay, D.F., Hobfoll, S.E., Ickes, W., & Montgomery, B., (Eds.), (1988). Handbook of personal relationships: Theory, research, and interventions (1st ed.). Chichester, UK: Wiley.
- Duck, S.W., Dindia, K., Ickes, W., Milardo, R.M., Mills, R., & Sarason, B. (Eds.) (1997). Handbook of personal relationships: Theory, research, and interventions (2nd ed.). Chichester, UK: Wiley.
- Ickes, W. (Ed.) (1997). Empathic accuracy. New York: Guilford Press.
- Decety, J., & Ickes, W. (Eds.) (2009). The social neuroscience of empathy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Smith, J.L., Ickes, W., Hall, J., & Hodges, S.D. (Eds.). (2011). Managing interpersonal sensitivity: Knowing when—and when not—to understand others. New York: Nova Science.