Graduate school dean moves to Yale College

Psychology professor Peter Salovey replaces Richard Brodhead as dean of the undergraduate school.

A little over a year after he was appointed dean of the graduate school, Peter Salovey, Ph.D. ’86, has taken on a new post as dean of Yale College. He replaces Richard H. Brodhead, Ph.D., who left Yale to become president of Duke University.

Salovey, the Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology, is deputy director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS based at the School of Public Health, where he is also a professor. His work on message framing has explored the effectiveness of health promotion campaigns designed to reduce risky behaviors that can lead to infection with HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. He has conducted similar work on health communications targeting cancer prevention behaviors.

In more than 200 publications he has reported on human emotion and health psychology. His research has explored the psychological consequences of the arousal of emotion, especially the ways in which mood and emotion influence autobiographical memory and social interaction. With John D. Mayer, Ph.D., Salovey developed the theory of emotional intelligence, showing that people have a wide range of measurable emotional skills that profoundly affect their thinking and action.

Salovey has served on the National Science Foundation Social Psychology Advisory Panel and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Behavioral Science Working Group, and is presently a member of the NIMH National Advisory Mental Health Council. He was a recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Young Investigator Award and of the 2001 National Cancer Institute’s CIS Partner in Research Award.

Salovey has been chair of the psychology department and director of undergraduate studies and graduate studies. He has won the William Clyde DeVane Medal for Distinguished Scholarship and Teaching at Yale College and the Les Hixon ’63 Prize for Teaching in the Social Sciences.

Jon Butler, Ph.D., chair of the Department of History, professor of religious studies and the William Robertson Coe Professor of American Studies and History, will replace Salovey as dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.