The Department of Psychology, located in Peretsman-Scully Hall, is an academic department of Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. It has been home to psychologists who have made significant scientific discoveries in psychology and neuroscience, such as adult neurogenesis in primate brains, the concept of the cognitive miser, bystander non-intervention, face-selective neurons in primate brains, feature integration theory, mental models theory, and prospect theory.
The department's large undergraduate and graduate programs are highly ranked and it has developed a well-respected neuroscience program. The faculty have received numerous awards, including a Nobel Prize, six Distinguished Contributions awards from the American Psychological Association, and three William James Fellow awards from the Association for Psychological Science (APS). Additionally, faculty members have previously served as presidents of the APS, are fellows of the APS, and have been inducted into the National Academy of Sciences. As of 2024, the department is chaired by Casey Lew-Williams, a developmental psychologist known for his work on communication in human infancy.
History
In 1893, fourteen years after Wilhelm Wundt founded the first psychology laboratory in the world, a Psychology Laboratory was built in Nassau Hall, the oldest building in the university, under the leadership of J. Mark Baldwin. In 1915, psychology received recognition in the title when the department was renamed Department of Philosophy and Psychology. It was not until 1920, however, that the Department of Psychology was established with Howard Warren as its first chairman. In 1924, Eno Hall was constructed to house the department. The building was named in honor of Henry Eno, the principal donor and research associate in psychology. Warren was also a donor, but he chose to keep his donation anonymous at the time. He commented that it was "the first laboratory in this country, if not in the world, dedicated solely to the teaching and investigation of scientific psychology."Eno Hall from According to university president John Hibben, the laboratory was the realization of a dream that Warren had cherished for a long time.
University president James McCosh was primary professor of psychology in the early days of the department.Maier, B. N. (2004). The role of James McCosh in God's exile from psychology. History of Psychology, 7(4), 323-339. Baldwin, who studied under both McCosh and Wundt, continued this tradition.
An Office of Public Opinion Research was established when Hadley Cantril was department head: Already by the mid-1930s, Cantril made contact with Gallup, who, welcoming recognition of his new methods by an academic scholar, offered the Princeton man the full use of his facilities at cost. Later, in 1940, Cantril secured a Rockefeller Foundation grant to set up the Office of Public Opinion Research at Princeton. The objectives of this new institute included not only learning how to measure public opinion systematically and accurately but also understanding the psychology of public opinion, "how and why it changes, what motivates large segments of the public."J. Michael Sproule (1997) Propaganda and Democracy, page 183, Cambridge University Press .
The Office's 1947 report Gauging Public Opinion noted the arrival of a new discipline: Over the past ten years, public opinion research has evolved from an academic pastime and commercial toy to a distinct discipline. American business has avidly exploited the enormous possibilities of the sampling technique in market research. Newspaper and magazine publishers quickly recognized the news value of reporting on the nation's opinions. And now responsible public officials have learned to take opinion polls seriously for their contribution to modern statecraft.Hadley Cantril and associates of the Office of Public Opinion Research (1947) : Gauging Public Opinion, page vii, Princeton University Press
In 1963, the department relocated to Green Hall on the corner of Washington St. and William St. The building, which had been previously occupied by the School of Engineering, was redesigned by university alumnus Francis W. Roudebush for the use of the psychology and sociology departments.Green Hall from
In 1972, the Princeton Psychology Colloquium Committee, which schedules weekly speeches and discussions for psychology students, invited Richard Herrnstein, psychology professor at Harvard University to speak about the vision of pigeons.Herrnstein feels threatened, cancels Princeton appearance. (1972). The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved August 6, 2008. At the time, Herrnstein was the victim of serious criticism because he had written an article in which he argued that genetic differences would play an increasingly larger role in the determination of social status.Heyman, G. M., Maher, B. A., White, S. H., & Wilson, J. Q. (1998). Faculty of Arts and Sciences, memorial minute. The Harvard University Gazette. Retrieved August 6, 2008. Because Princeton's University Action Group, a radical student organization, threatened to sabotage the event on the grounds that Herrnstein was a racist, the Harvard professor canceled his appearance. Kamin asserted that "the climate in which [Herrnstein's] decision was made raises serious questions about freedom of speech."
Most of the department's graduates from the classes of 2004 to 2007 had placements in the faculties of research universities and post-doctoral positions.Princeton University Graduate School. (2017). Graduate Students Thanks to a group of faculty and students who work across traditional disciplines and departments, interdisciplinary research and scholarship in the department has grown significantly since the end of the twentieth century.
In December, 2013, the department relocated to the newly built Peretsman-Scully Hall, located farther down Washington Road on the southeast side of Poe Field.
Academic The quality of the department's teaching and research has been recognized by high rankings in U.S. News & World Report (USNWR, ranked #3 in 2025) and the National Research Council.National Research Council report as referenced by the Social Psychology Network. Retrieved July 10, 2008.
Graduate The graduate study is focused on systems neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, perception and cognition, personality and social psychology, and physiological psychology. It is a preparatory program for a Ph.D., which takes approximately five years to complete, and a career of scholarship in psychology.Princeton University Department of Psychology. (2004). General information on graduate programs . Retrieved July 30, 2008. Every year, six doctoral degrees and eight master's degrees are awarded on average.Princeton University Office of the Registrar. (2008). Princeton University doctoral and masters degrees awarded by academic year . Retrieved August 5, 2008. Students in the university's M.D./Ph.D. program, run jointly with the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, are also able to pursue their doctoral degree in the department.Hanamirian, J. (2005). University joins M.D./Ph.D. program . The Daily Princetonian. Retrieved July 10, 2008.
Laboratory units are organized around the research programs of the faculty. These programs range from animal motivation and conditioning processes to decision making in human social groups, from neurophysiological mechanisms controlling basic drives to attributional processes in judging other individuals, from the sensory and perceptual roots of human cognition to concept formation and problem solving behavior in the child and adult, from the mathematical and computer techniques employed in research to the mechanisms of attitude formation and change.
Admission to the graduate program is highly competitive. The number of applications received by the department has risen steadily from 2003 to 2007 and, consequently, the admission rate has declined accordingly. In 2003, twenty out of 192 applicants were accepted. Though seventeen applicants were admitted to the program in 2007, the applicant pool had almost fifty more applicants than the applicant pool from four years earlier.
Men are better represented in the department's student body than in the student bodies of most psychology graduate programs in the United States. Women account for about half of the department's graduate student body, even though women made up 68 percent of the recipients of doctoral degrees in psychology in 2005.National Science Foundation. (2008). S&E doctoral degrees awarded to women, by field: 1998–2005 . Retrieved August 5, 2008. Gender representation notwithstanding, female graduate students in psychology programs may benefit from same-sex mentors in their departments.Schlegel, M. (2000). Women mentoring women. Monitor on Psychology, 31(10). Whereas only 33 percent of faculty members in psychology departments in the United States are women,Nelson, D. J. (2007). A National Analysis of Diversity in Science and Engineering Faculties at Research Universities . Retrieved August 5, 2008. the Department of Psychology's faculty has a female representation of over 40 percent.Princeton University Department of Psychology. (2004). Faculty . Retrieved August 5, 2008. Additionally, the department is one of two departments at Princeton University that has had women who have served as departmental chairs.Zakian, V., Draine, B., Ferrand, L., Girgus, J., Lee, R., Paxson, C., et al. (2003). Report of the Task Force on the Status of Women Faculty in the Natural Sciences and Engineering at Princeton. Retrieved August 5, 2008.
Nine percent of the department's graduate students are underrepresented minorities. In contrast, twelve percent of recipients of psychology doctoral degrees in 2005 were African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans.National Science Foundation. (2008). Field distribution of doctorate recipients, by race/ethnicity and citizenship: 2005 . Retrieved August 5, 2008. However, the ethnic and racial diversity of the department's students is comparable to the diversity of the student body of the university's Graduate School. Eight percent of the university's graduate students are members of the three aforementioned underrepresented groups.Trustees of Princeton University, The. (2008). Admission statistics at a glance. Retrieved August 5, 2008. To reduce minority underrepresentation in graduate school, the department's faculty and graduate students participate in the Princeton Summer Undergraduate Research Experience program, which seeks to encourage students from underrepresented groups to apply to and succeed in graduate school.Trustees of Princeton University, The. (2008). Princeton Summer Undergraduate Research Experience's research areas . Retrieved August 5, 2008.Quiñones, E. (2008). Undergraduates chart path toward graduate school . News at Princeton. Retrieved August 5, 2008.
Program in cognitive psychology The department was "a presence in the burgeoning field of cognitive psychology."Stevens, R. (2006). Ronald Kinchla, longtime professor of psychology, dies. News at Princeton. Retrieved July 9, 2008. The research of the cognitive psychology program's faculty spans a wide set of issues within the study of cognitive processes that include cognitive control, memory, judgment and decision making, language processing, reasoning, and visual perception. The highly interdisciplinary quality of these topics of study results in research that is interactive and multifaceted. Most of the research is conducted at the intersection of fields like computer science and neuroscience.
As of 2015, Princeton announced the new Program in Cognitive Science, an interdisciplinary undertaking involving scholars from Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Linguistics, Molecular Biology, Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Psychology.
Program in psychology and public policy