I'm often asked what I do at APS. (Particularly by my former colleagues in graduate school! And my mother.) The official answer is that I am APS's liaison with federal research agencies and Congress, which means I educate policymakers about the role of behavioral science in health, education, and other areas of public concern, as well as advocate to improve the visibility of psychological science and further its use in developing public policy. That doesn't help much, does it? That's why this featurette was born: to give you a better sense of how we do just that. Much of the work happens behind the scenes and sometimes in measured steps; that's how it's done in this town, and with great success on APS' part. We're busting open to give you the inside scoop – in an occasional column, I'll report on the latest happenings in the world of behavioral science advocacy. Be forewarned: you're going to learn a lot of acronyms (and you're expected to remember them).
- Amy Pollick
Government Relations and Advocacy
The APS Government Relations team educates federal policy makers about the role of behavioral science in health, education, productivity, and other areas of public concern, and works to improve the visibility of psychological science and further its use in developing public policy.
Issues
Access information about current issues affecting the psychological science community.
Congressional Activities
See the latest Congressional report language and testimonies.
Observer Coverage
Read recent articles covering a variety of topics relating to government relations in the Observer.
Federal Agencies
Acces resources about federal agencies and Congress.
Current Funding Opportunities
Success Stories in Behavioral Science
Energized Science, Part 2
The Department of Energy (DoE) knows it needs behavioral science to create an energy-efficient country. APS is on the ground floor in helping it shape the research agenda it needs to accomplish this. APS Fellow and Board Member Elke Weber, Columbia University, was a participant in a DoE/ACEEE (the latter is the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy – see, it's acronyms galore around here) workshop the other day. Weber is a distinguished research in the area of judgment and decision-making, and is co-director of the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia. Her talk on cognitive mediators of environmentally relevant behavior opened up the energy folks' eyes to all kinds of possibilities. I participated as well; my work group included representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the Oakridge National Laboratory, and they were very interested in how psychological research on message framing, adherence to the status quo, and decision-making can aid in efforts to get people to conserve energy. Productive day, indeed.
NSF Round Up
I recently chatted with a couple of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) program officers who support research in perception, action, and cognition. It's amazing how many cross-directorate (SBE is one directorate; there are others for biology, education, cyberinfrastructure, etc.) initiatives they're involved in, like the spiffy-sounding Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems, Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation, Social-Computational Systems, and several in the pipeline, such as one focusing on brain and behavior. The program officers told me how modeling is an important technique in many research collaborations involving psychologists, and it's growing. Grad students, take a modeling course! These initiatives give a great (and painless) booster shot to the overall funding level for behavioral science at NSF.
To Merge Or Not to Merge?
Structurally, the National Institutes of Health would never have been designed from the ground up the many-, many-tentacled behemoth that it has become. Many of its 27 separate Institutes and Centers were established for political rather than scientific reasons. As part of an overall study of NIH's structure, a group of NIH Institute directors, outside scientists, and industry representatives is examining a merger of the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse (NIAAA) and the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) into one institute on addiction. I've been talking to officials at both Institutes about the pros and cons of a potential merger, and as you can imagine, passions are running deep in both directions. It'll be a while before a decision is reached, but grantees of these institutes should keep an eye out for what's happening.
Signing off,