Mark Schaller

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Education

I actually didn't go to any real school until I was in 2nd Grade. Before that, I was home-schooled. But then it was regular public schools in Vermont and Connecticut (except for two years at the Lahore American School in Pakistan).

As an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina I majored in Psychology. But mostly I took literature courses because they were more fun. At the beginning of my last year at UNC I suddenly decided I wanted to go to graduate school in Social Psychology. So I took a course in social psychology to find out what I was getting myself in for, and I did a social psychological honors thesis too. My honors thesis was, truthfully, not very good at all; but I really liked doing research.

And so in 1984 I went to Arizona State University. The main reason I went to ASU (aside from the fact that they accepted me) was because I was interested in doing research on emotion and helping behavior, and there were two people at ASU doing a lot of work on the topic: Bob Cialdini and Nancy Eisenberg. I started working with them. I ended up doing a bunch of different bits of research with both of them. And most of the stuff that I had accomplished by the time I finished my PhD, I accomplished under either Bob's or Nancy's mentorship. So it turns out I had made a very good choice about where to go to graduate school. I'd made a good choice for another reason too: I took a class from Anne Maass (who was visiting from the University of Padova) and, as a result, got turned on to an entirely different line of research. She and I did some studies on stereotype formation – an area that eventually became my primary line of research.

In retrospect, I think the two best things about the Social Psychology graduate program at ASU had nothing to do with any specific elements of the program, but rather had to do with the atmosphere of the place. First, there was a strong feeling of intellectual community in the program, with good opportunities to get supportive critical feedback from faculty and graduate students alike. Second, the program was fairly non-directive, so I always felt like I could do anything I wanted. Naturally, this meant that I actually did a bunch of half-baked studies that didn't go anywhere. But that's okay, because some of those half-baked studies eventually led to more completely-baked research programs that eventually did go somewhere.

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Professional Experience

In 1989 I finished graduate school and took a job as in the Psychology Department at the University of Texas at Arlington. I was at UT-Arlington for two years. During that time, I mostly conducted research on statistical reasoning and stereotype formation processes. It was a fine job, but for personal reasons I wanted to move.

And so, in 1991 I moved to the University of Montana. I was there for five years. I continued to do work on statistical reasoning and stereotype formation. I also began to cultivate several other lines of empirical research, as well as an interest in the psychological and philosophical aspects of scientific inquiry.

In 1996 I decided to move to the University of British Columbia. At UBC I've been pursuing various lines of research pertaining to stereotypes, prejudices, and other aspects of social cognition. In doing so, I've been using these projects as a means of exploring broader questions pertaining to the psychological foundations of culture, and the influence of human evolutionary history on contemporary psychological processes. These have been fun, challenging and occasionally productive lines of inquiry – for which I give a great deal of credit to the graduate students and other collaborators who have joined me on these projects. (If you want to find out more about these lines of work, click here.)

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Personal Stuff

I was born in 1962 at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, California. But I didn't live there long enough to remember any of it.

My parents are George and Kay Schaller. My dad's a zoologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society. My mom works with him in lots of ways. I've got a brother, Eric, who is a year and a half older than me. He's a biology professor at Dartmouth.

My dad's work kept us on the move while I was growing up. We lived in various parts of the United States. We also lived overseas. We lived in India for a year, in Tanzania for three years, and for two years we lived in Pakistan. I spent my adolescence in the States, in the little rural town of Roxbury, Connecticut.

In 1980 I moved to Chapel Hill to attend the University of North Carolina. I read a lot of books (Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, Soren Kierkegaard: the usual suspects). I was a not-very-good high-jumper on the UNC track team. Most importantly, I met and hung out with some really clever people who have had a lasting impact on me.

Then in 1984 I moved to Tempe, Arizona to go to graduate school at Arizona State University. I was there for five years (minus a half-year that I took off and spent hanging out in Chapel Hill and in China). During most of my time there I devoted myself pretty single-mindedly to the sorts of things that graduate students do. But I had some fun too, of course, and spent a lot of time with some really smart and funny people. And I discovered the beauty of the desert.

Since finishing graduate school in 1989, I've been lucky enough to find good work at Universities. I spent two years in Texas. And then lived for five years in Missoula, Montana. Montana's great. I spent a lot of time there in the mountains – mountain biking, backpacking, running into bear and moose and mountain goats.

In 1996 I had the opportunity to take a job in one of the very few places I'd even consider leaving Montana for. And so I moved to Vancouver.

Vancouver is a fantastic place to live.  I work at the University of British Columbia. I live with my lover Quincy-Robyn, our kids Jasper (born in 2001) and Maddox (born in 2005), and our cats. We have a wonderful community of friends and neighbors. We have a great house and a garden. We're close to the beach. We're close to the mountains.