2025 SWPA Convention

Dr. Roy Baumeister
Florida State University
Harvard University
Constructor University 
University of Queensland
President of the International Positive Psychology Association 

Keynote Address

Roy F. Baumeister is professor of psychology associated with the University of Queensland, Florida State University, and Constructor University Bremen. He grew up in Cleveland, the oldest child of a schoolteacher and an immigrant businessman. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from Princeton in 1978 and did a postdoctoral fellowship in sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. He spent over two decades at Case Western Reserve University, where he eventually was the first to hold the Elsie Smith professorship. He has also worked at Harvard University, the University of Texas, the University of Virginia, the Max-Planck-Institute, the VU Free University of Amsterdam, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Bamberg, the Russell Sage Foundation, and Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
Baumeister’s research spans multiple topics, including self and identity, self-regulation, interpersonal rejection and the need to belong, sexuality and gender, aggression, self-esteem, meaning, and self-presentation. He has received research grants from the National Institutes of Health and from the Templeton Foundation. He has over 700 publications, and his 45 books include Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, The Cultural Animal, Meanings of Life, and the New York Times bestseller Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. The Institute for Scientific Information lists him among the handful of most cited (most influential) psychologists in the world, and Google Scholar indicates that his work has been cited over 280,000 times in the scientific literature, with over 60 of his publications having been cited a thousand times each. His awards include the William James Award (the highest honor for lifetime achievement by the Association for Psychological Science), the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award (highest honor by Humboldt Society), and the Distinguished Scientist Award (highest honor from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology). He is currently president of the International Positive Psychology Association.

Dr. Kurt Gray
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience - University of North Caroline at Chapel Hill
Director of the Deepest Beliefs Lab & the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding

Keynote Address

Bio

Kurt Gray is a social psychologist who studies our moral minds and how best to bridge political divides. He was almost a geophysicist, but a night trapped in the Canadian wilderness convinced him otherwise.
Prof Gray received his PhD from Harvard University, and now directs the Deepest Beliefs Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also leads the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding, which explores new ways to reduce polarization, and is a Field Builder in the New Pluralists, which seeks to build a moral pluralistic America.
Spanning over 120 journal articles, Gray has studied morality, politics, religion, creativity, and AI. His work reveals that our moral mind is grounded in perceptions of harm, and that political disagreement revolves around different assumptions about who is most vulnerable to victimization. His work has been discussed in New York Times, the Economist, Scientific American, Wired, and Hidden Brain.
He is the author of the book The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels and Why it Matters (Viking), and the forthcoming Outraged: Why we Fight about Morality and Politics (Pantheon).

Talk

Understanding Moral Divides

Our moral world is divided. People disagree on the morality of abortion, gay rights, and gun control, and there are many different acts that people judge as immoral, ranging from murder to religious blasphemy. Decades of research assumes that differences in moral judgment require a set of distinct moral mechanisms—a divided moral mind. However, my work demonstrates that, despite moral disagreement and diversity, the moral mind is ultimately unified by a common currency of harm. I present studies revealing that interpersonal harm serves as the cognitive template of moral judgment. My research also provides a new understanding of harm, demonstrating that it is neither objective nor reasoned, but rather subjective and intuitive. A unified, harm-based moral mind argues against the psychological existence of "harmless wrongs" while embracing moral diversity and cultural pluralism. In addition to changing our understanding of moral cognition, this work reveals a practical application of a unified moral mind: sharing personal experiences of harm provides an effective means of bridging moral divides.

Wendy Fischman
Harvard University
Director of Project Zero

Keynote Address

In 1995, Wendy Fischman joined Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has served as Project Director for several aspects of the GoodWork® Project, studying the meaning of education and work in the lives of novice professionals, adolescents, and young children. Wendy has published work about human development and education in several scholarly and popular journals. She has co-developed The Good Work Toolkit, which comprises of a curriculum that helps teachers and students discuss issues of excellence, ethics, and engagement. With Howard Gardner, she led a large-scale national study of higher education across ten different campuses. She is the lead author of Making Good: How Young People Cope with Moral Dilemmas at Work (published by Harvard University Press) and another book related to higher education, The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be (published by MIT Press).

Wendi Johnson
Texas Woman's University

Woodcock Institute Keynote Address

Wendi L. Johnson is a licensed psychologist and associate professor of School Psychology at Texas Woman's University for the last 14 years. Dr. Johnson is also the director of the Woodcock Autism Assessment Clinic, which completes multidisciplinary evaluations for children between the ages of 18 months and 18 years for the possibility of an autism spectrum disorder. Currently, Dr. Johnson is the assistant Executive Director of the Woodcock Institute and will be taking over the Executive Director position as of 9-1-25. Dr. Johnson teaches coursework at TWU such as School Neuropsychological Assessment, Direct Behavior Intervention, Psychology of Violence, Trauma and Abuse, and Developmental Psychology, as well as coordinates the Practicum and Internship placements for the program. Dr. Johnson's research team entitled the B.R.A.I.N. team (Behavior, Research, Assessment, and Intervention in Neurodevelopmental Disorders) has multiple projects ongoing that examine autism intervention and assessment, mothers in academia, support for families in foster care and adoption, autism and masking, and early screening for autism.