http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ickes
William Ickes is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas at Arlington. [ 1 ] 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. [ 2 ] 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. [ 3 ]
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[edit] 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 Aronson 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; [ 4 ] and an International Francqui Chair at Ghent University and the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, in 2005. [ 5 ]
He married Mary Jo Renard in 1967 and they had three sons: Marcus, John, and William (who died at the age of 13).
[edit] Empathic accuracy (everyday mind reading)
Both alone and in collaboration with various colleagues, Ickes has published widely on the topic of empathic accuracy. 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. [ 6 ] 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. [ 7 ] [ 8 ]
[edit] Personality influences on strangers' interactions
Using the unstructured dyadic interaction paradigm, [ 9 ] 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' gender, their birth order, [ 10 ] their race/ethnicity, [ 11 ] [ 12 ] and their physical attractiveness. [ 13 ] They have also examined the effects of various personality traits such as androgyny, [ 14 ] [ 15 ] the Big Five personality traits, shyness, [ 16 ] and self-monitoring. [ 17 ] This research is summarized in Strangers in a Strange Lab (2009