How trauma and authoritarian upbringings can lead to rigid and narrow thinking and a need for absolute certainty

  • Authoritarianism
  • Indoctrination
  • Trauma and Bigotry
  • Rigid Thinking
  • Social Dominance
Note: Bios are excerpted from the websites and professional resumes of the researchers. 
Click on names to connect to more info.
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Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D.
Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D is John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Biological Sciences and Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University. Sapolsky, a neuroendocrinologist, has focused his research on issues of stress and neuron degeneration, as well as on the possibilities of gene therapy strategies for help in protecting susceptible neurons from disease. In his well-known book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: An Updated Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases and Coping (Freeman 1994, second edition 1998), for example, Sapolsky examines how prolonged stress can cause or contribute to damaging physical and mental afflictions. His lab was among the first to document that stress can damage the neurons of the hippocampus. He is currently working on gene transfer techniques to strengthen neurons against the disabling effects of glucocorticoids. Sapolsky has received numerous honors and awards for his work, including the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and the Klingenstein Fellowship in Neuroscience. He received the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award and the Young Investigator of the Year Awards from the Society for Neuroscience, the Biological Psychiatry Society, and the International Society for Psychoneuro-Endocrinology. Author of numerous science articles, he is on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychoneuroendocrinology, and Stress and is a contributing editor for The Sciences.

Robert Altemeyer, Ph.D. 
Robert "Bob" Altemeyer is a retired Professor of Psychology at the University of Manitoba. Born in St. Louis, he earned a B.S. at Yale University in 1962 and a Ph.D at Carnegie-Mellon in 1966. 

He has written extensively on authoritarianism and refined the theory into the concept (and measure) of Right Wing Authoritarianism. His first book, Right-Wing Authoritarianism, was published in 1981 and reports the results of fifteen years of research on the 'pre-Fascist personality' in North American society. As the world’s leading authority on The Authoritarian Personality, he has made a book on this topic available for free.
  • Baily Endowed Chair of Animal Well-Being Science andProfessor, Veterinary and Comparative Anatomy, Pharmacy, Physiology (VCAPP), Washington State University
  • Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Psychology, 
    Bowling Green State University
  • Head, Affective Neuroscience Research, Falk Center for Molecular Therapeutics, Northwestern University

Our present research is devoted to the analysis of the neuroanatomical and neurochemical mechanisms of emotional behaviors (in the emerging fields of affective and social neurosciences), with a focus on understanding how various affective processes are evolutionarily organized in the brain, and looking for linkages to psychiatric disorders and drug addiction. We conduct research on brain "instinctual" mechanisms of fear, anger, separation distress (panic), investigatory processes an anticipatory eagerness, as well as rough-and-tumble play. We are especially interested in how various brain neuropeptide systems regulate emotional feelings and social bonds. Prior to the ongoing work on emotional systems, we studied hypothalamic mechanisms of energy balance control and neural regulation of sleep-waking states. In addition to 300+ scientific articles (see CV, link below), I have co-edited the multivolume Handbook of the Hypothalamus and of Emotions and Psychopathology, a series in Advances in Biological Psychiatry and a Textbook of Biological Psychiatry (Wiley, 2004). My other textbook, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (Oxford, 1998), has helped inaugurate a new field of inquiry which attempts to probe the affective infrastructure of the mammalian brain.

Our working assumption is that all of consciousness was built on affective value systems during the long course of brain evolution. In my new book, The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions (in press), I present these topics to a wider, more general audience and include discussion of current research in affective neuroscience. Our research orientation is that a detailed understanding of basic emotional systems at the neural level will highlight the basic sources of human values and the nature and genesis of emotional disorders in humans. In the 1980s we helped developed the still controversial opioid-antagonist therapy for autistic children based on pre-clinical investigations into brain circuits that control social behaviors (http://www.autism-help.org/points-brain-chemistry-autism.htm) as well as the use of melatonin in regulating common sleep-waking problems in pervasive developmental disorder (http://legacy.autism.com/treatable/supplement/melatonin.htm). 

We are pursuing new therapies for the treatment of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD), and depression. Many of the findings from animal models are ready to be evaluated in human psychological research. Accordingly, we are seeking to facilitate the development of new depth-psychological perspectives to understanding the human mind.

Our Center for the Study of Animal Well Being  (http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/depts-CSAW/) and People-Pet Partnership Program (http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/depts-pppp/), are devoted to the study and improvement of animal emotional well-being.

Please see related story in WSU Today for more biography of Dr. Panksepp

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Kathleen Taylor, D.Phil.

Science writer and researcher

Affiliated to the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford
I have a B.A. and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford and a research M.Sc. from the University of Stirling. My first degree was in physiology and philosophy, a combination of the (now-defunct) PPP course so rare and problematic that to judge by the exam list, I was the only one in my year-group fool enough to attempt it. If by some chance you did that pairing, do get in touch; so far I've never met anyone who did. The M.Sc. was ostensibly in psychology. Actually neuropharmacology, but there wasn't a neuroscience department. The D.Phil. was in computational neuroscience. Eye movements.

I have many interests - interdisciplinary approaches are vital in this field - but I focus on three main questions: 
  • how do human brains work? 
  • how are people's behaviour and identities affected by their beliefs?
  • how does science work?

My three books to date explore questions of interest to many people who will never study neuroscience or psychology: 
● Brainwashing: 2004 
How are some people able to make others change their beliefs, sometimes very radically, and sometimes at great cost to themselves?
● Cruelty: 2009
How is it that some apparently normal people can become exceptionally cruel, even to the extent of torturing and murdering a lover, friend or child?
● The Brain Supremacy: 2012 (Autumn)
How will the new brain sciences change our world?
  • Professor of Psychiatry and Radiology and Director of the Emory Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit (ECNRU) at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia
  • Director of Mental Health Research at the Atlanta VAMC in Decatur, Georgia. 

Dr. Bremner’s research has used neuroimaging and neurobiology measures to study the neural correlates and neurobiology of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to combat and childhood abuse, as well as the related area of depression. He is one of the top three most highly cited researchers in the world in his field. His more recent work is expanding to look at the relationship between brain, behavior, including studies of heart disease and the brain, and the effects of medication on the brain. and physical health. Dr. Bremner has worked continuously throughout his career as a physician scientist, with the support of funding from two successive VA Career Development Awards, VA Merit Review, NIMH, DOD, and various private sources. His research includes studies of the neurobiology and assessment of PTSD, hippocampus and memory in PTSD and depression, neural correlates of declarative memory and traumatic remembrance in PTSD, PET measurement of neuroreceptor binding in mood and anxiety disorders, neural correlates of myocardial ischemia, and the effects of psychotropic and acne medication on brain function and structure.
Other books include Brain Imaging Handbook and Does Stress Damage the Brain? 
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Robert S. Pynoos, M.D., M.P.H.
The National Child Traumatic Stress Network
Robert S. Pynoos, M.D., M.P.H., is Professor of Psychiatry in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. He is Co-Director of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, Director of the UCLA Trauma Psychiatry Service and Executive Director of the UCLA Anxiety Disorders Section. Dr. Pynoos is a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University Schools of Physicians & Surgeons and Public Health.

Over the past two decades, he has made significant contributions to understanding the impact of children's exposure to violence and disaster, and to elevating the standards of mental health care for child victims and witnesses. He has written extensively on child development and child traumatic stress, the neurobiology of child and adolescent trauma, and public mental health approaches for children and families after disaster, war and community violence. He has edited several widely respected books on posttraumatic stress in children and adolescents. He is past President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and the 2001 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Dr. Pynoos has served as Chair for the William T. Grant Consortium on Adolescent Bereavement and for the MacArthur Foundation Network Study Group on Children's Responses to Traumatic Stress. He served as a consultant to the United States Department of Education after the Oklahoma City bombing, to the Springfield Oregon Public School District after the Thurston High School shooting, to Jefferson County Mental Health after the Columbine High School tragedy and to Santana High School, Santee, California. He has been a consultant to UNICEF for Kuwait after the Gulf War, has a long-standing collaborative relationship with UNICEF to conduct a long-term post-war recovery program for adolescents in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and worked for years with the Armenian Relief Society in their decade-long post-earthquake recovery efforts. Dr. Pynoos was an invited participant to the 1999 White House Strategy Session on Children, Violence and Responsibility. He has received the American Psychiatric Association Bruno Lima Award for excellence in disaster psychiatry.
Research Interests:
  • Intergroup relations
  • Prejudice and Stereotyping
  • Altruism and Helping
  • Nonverbal Communication
  • My work centers around issues of social power and social relations, both between groups and between individuals. I explore both conscious (explicit) and unconscious (implicit) influences on how people think about, feel about, and behave toward others based on group membership. I continue to conduct research on aversive racism, a contemporary subtle form of prejudice, and on techniques for reducing conscious and unconscious biases. 

The Yale Intergroup Relations Lab is dedicated to the study of intergroup relations and diversity. Its goal is to understand (a) the processes leading to prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination of racial and ethnic groups, sexual minorities, immigrants, and people with disabilities; (b) the experiences, adaptations, and resilience of members of stigmatized groups; and (c) how cultural bias and social power influence the nature of intergroup interactions in ways that create intergroup miscommunication and reinforce social prejudices, subtly contribute to social inequality, and hinder genuinely helpful interpersonal and intergroup behavior.

Research in the Yale Intergroup Relations Lab incorporates a range of methodologies and techniques from social psychology, clinical psychology, political psychology, field research, social cognition, and neuroscience. Although experimental research is central, the work of the laboratory encompasses a range of different empirical approaches. Topics are international in scope and bridge basic research with applications for social policy and interventions to improve intergroup relations and promote social equality.