Abstract
It is my great honor to introduce this year’s recipient of the 2024 Cooley Mead Award for Lifetime Achievement in Social Psychology—Brian Powell, the James H. Rudy Professor of Sociology at Indiana University (IU). Brian began his career as a sociology undergraduate at Hobart College in Geneva, New York, before moving to warmer climates to complete his MA and PhD in sociology at Emory University in Atlanta. He then transitioned to Indiana University - Bloomington as a postdoc in the National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral training program in measurement. Much to his surprise, he then proceeded to spend the bulk—although perhaps not all—of his career surrounded by an impressive roster of social psychological luminaries, many of whom have also received this illustrious world, including Sheldon Stryker, Peter Burke, Peggy Thoits, and most recently, Jane McLeod.
Every year, the Cooley Mead Award is given to an individual who has made lifetime contributions to distinguished scholarship—including both methodological and theoretical developments—in the field of sociological social psychology. As with other recipients before him, it could be said that Brian needs no introduction. It is worth noting, however, that although Brian’s path through social psychology as a subfield has been truly exceptional, it has also been somewhat unique among previous recipients.
Historically, the Cooley Mead Award has been seemingly reserved for—or at least awarded to—individuals who spent their lives developing a particular theoretical tradition, a particular paradigm, or a particular or adjacent field of study. These areas have included but are certainly not limited to theories and studies of identity, emotion, mental health, stress, social movements, justice, gender, and so on.
But as a die-hard symbolic interactionist (Blumer 1986), I am pleased to say that Brian Powell gives us the opportunity to think more broadly about what it means not only when we use the word “lifetime” but also “achievement,” let alone phrases like “advances to the field.” For what are these but symbols—to be defined and used by members of a community who need language not only to communicate but also to understand exactly who and what we are, not to mention how we are faring or feeling.
Many—and I do mean many—letter writers championing Brian Powell’s nomination for this award used such terms that are not typically included in these types of letters. Independently and as a group, they used such descriptors as “eclectic,” “multi-faceted,” “multi-method,” “multi-theoretical,” “versatile,” and “everywhere”—as in “that guy is literally everywhere!”
As one letter writer pointed out, Brian Powell did not start his illustrious professional career as a social psychologist but rather as a family demographer who, granted, worked for and with social psychologists before segueing through a number of substantive fields, such as gender, education, sexuality, and emotion, among others.
Notably, Brian Powell has garnered lifetime achievement awards in more than one of these substantive fields, ahead of the one he received here.
The same letter writer also began his nomination with the following statement, which, quite honestly, could have been penned by any number of Brian’s graduate students, colleagues, or coauthors: “What could I possibly say about Brian Powell, other than if it weren’t for that guy I’d probably be lying dead in a ditch somewhere.” Without going into too much more detail, this letter writer was but one of the chairs of the Social Psych Section who were among the letter writers supporting this nomination. As I return to in the following, Brian’s contributions to the field are as broad as they are deep and as diverse as they are targeted. And they work not only through him but also through those whose lives he has impacted through this tutelage and generosity.
I will not use my precious words going through Brian Powell’s incredible list of academic accomplishments. Still, it is worth noting that he is incredibly prolific, and his articles are consistently well placed. Instead, I invite you all to go check out the record—which is publicly available on the IU website (https://sociology.indiana.edu/about/faculty/powell-brian.html).
But given what we all know about how social comparisons work (Festinger 1954), make sure you have adequately structured yours ahead of time so that it is motivating (Taylor and Lobel 1989) or inspiring rather than demoralizing, especially as you begin to fully take in the magnitude and the scope of the 100 plus articles—many of which appear in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Psychology Quarterly, and Advances in Group Processes, among other top generalist or specialist journals.
Not to mention the book chapters, all of which are at equally reputable presses.
Or the books.
Let alone the multiple book awards, the enviable slew of grant funding, offices, and honorifics. Oh, yes, let’s not forget the teaching and mentoring awards.
It’s a lot.
And yet, one of the things that the book awards, the recent contribution awards, and the many other lifetime achievement awards do not reveal—that is, until you engage with the work—is that Brian Powell is, at his core, a true social psychologist.
Not only is he a social psychologist, but he is perhaps one of the most prolific and well-placed public social psychologists there is, having turned his attention to the use of large-scale public opinion to data to explore and elevate some of the most pressing social problems/issues we currently face: college payment (Quadlin and Powell 2022), marriage rights (Powell et al. 2010), and the decline of women’s willingness to “identify” as feminists (Hamilton, Geist, and Powell 2011). He does all of this using social psychological insights to bolster the arguments and let his audience experience their own behaviors and understandings in new ways (Powell et al. 2010).
Nor do they convey the fact that he is certainly one of the subfield’s—and the section’s—biggest hype men. Because he does not just draw on and boost one facet of social psychology, his approach is truly eclectic—if not opportunistic—in the best and most inclusive way possible. If a methodology works, he will use it. If an idea fits, he will adopt it.
Instead, over the last few decades of his career, Brian Powell has drawn on, contributed to, built on, consolidated, celebrated, and furthered several different theoretical traditions and multiple methodologies. Even those that many of us in this room often see—if not actually treat—as mutually exclusive (Kroska et al. 2023a, 2023b; Serpe, Stryker, and Powell 2020a, 2020b; Stryker, Serpe, and Powell 2020).
Nor do they tell you what you might notice—and wonder about—at nearly every professional meeting, where you see Brian Powell in the lobby surrounded by his graduate students, your graduate students, your colleagues’ graduate students, your peers, and scholars hailing from every rank who may have worked with him (or not) from multiple institutions around the country.
The reality is that even if you do not know what exactly Brian Powell does, his work, or his background, chances are you know Brian. He is inclusive, generous, and kind. He is curious and genuinely interested in people and ideas. He is outgoing and inviting.
He knows everyone, and he is a born connector.
He is also a born architect.
So, what, exactly, does it mean to be an architect in this context?
Well, in Brian Powell’s case, instead of developing a theory here and a substantive field there (although he has done that too; e.g., Doan, Quadlin, and Powell 2022; Lively, Steelman, and Powell 2010; Powell et al. 2016), he has spent the bulk of his career laying a multilevel teaching, research, and data infrastructure.
Brian is the codirector of IU’s Teaching Future Faculty and has taught the proseminar for over a decade, setting up many eventual social psychologists—the majority of whom have moved into their own productive and successful career paths within, adjacent to, or informed by social psychology. He has also run a number of social science research practicum at the Karl F. Schuessler Institute for Social Research at IU, which has led to not only many social psychology dissertations but also many first grants for social psychology graduate students.
Extending far beyond the walls of Ballantine Hall, Brian Powell was also instrumental in helping stand up TESS (Time Share Experiments for Social Sciences 2024; e.g., Doan, Quadlin, and Powell 2019; Powell, Schnabel, and Apgar 2017) and the reissuance of the long-awaited Emotions Module of the General Social Survey. He has sat on numerous grant funding boards, always keeping the interests of social psychology—and social psychologists—front and center. He has worked diligently in both theory and practice in illustrating the importance and the often unacknowledged pervasiveness of social psychological ideas. And he has introduced the theories that we all know so well to other subfields and substantive areas, breaking out of preexisting theoretical and substantive silos and building bridges vis-à-vis articles, books, collaborators, and data.
In addition to Brian’s own morphing into an undercover social psychologist (not to spoil his talk, although the title speaks for itself), he has also recruited others to the cause (Janice McCabe, personal communication).
But he is not all hype. Brian is also one of social psychology’s most critical advocates. And by this, I mean that he routinely invites, cajoles, and pushes social psychologists at every turn to make ourselves more relevant to one another and to the discipline as a whole (see any of Brian’s newsletters as chair of the section). He also encourages social psychology to be better and more inclusive in what we do, what we publish, and who we are (Hunt et al. 2000, 2013).
Finally, Brian is a bit of a magician.
Perhaps one of Brian's greatest social psychological magic tricks is that he sees it everywhere, which explains his equal opportunity application of it (e.g., Lively, Oslawski-Lopez, and Powell 2014). Indeed, if you do not have one, you might very well see some of us older folk wearing a lapel pin that was issued during his time as the section with those very words on it: “Social Psychology! It’s Everywhere!”
Sort of like Brian.
Now, I could stop there, but I would like to add one more thing.
I said earlier that Brian’s greatest magic trick is seeing social psychology everywhere, including other people’s work, even, apparently, when they themselves are too immersed in their previously held academic identities to do the same. But if there were a corresponding super power, it would be this: Brian sees the kernel (be it in an idea, a paper, a hunch, a data set, or a preexisting manuscript that is not quite right), and with the careful nurturing of a master gardener, he helps bring it to its highest and greatest potential. He does the same thing with people. And although he is not someone who will do everything for you, he will do absolutely everything to help you do it yourself.
Brian Powell has achieved great things for the subfield, and many of us have benefited from those efforts handsomely. Not only has he spent a good portion of his own lifetime doing so, but he has also launched countless individuals (and helped others whether they were “his” or not) into a series of highly celebrated and discipline-altering contributions of their own
Please join me in celebrating Dr. Brian Powell for his wonderful, generous, innovative, and generative contributions to the subfield, the section, and the members of the section who have benefited from working with him directly or who have benefited indirectly vis-à-vis his structural and infrastructural contributions to the field.