EPA 2021

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association will be held virtually on March 5-6, 2021.  The call for submissions was sent to members, fellows and associates on September 5, 2020.   If you are not a current member of EPA but would like to submit for the upcoming meeting, you may join EPA by following the links on this website.  Since the meeting is virtual, we hope to hear from our US and international colleagues who otherwise might be unable to attend an EPA meeting.  Instructions for submitting your proposal can be found elsewhere on this website.  Please watch this space for updates and further information about the meeting. 

COVID-19:  How to think about it

Our brains are wired to think about the consequences of our behavior.  How should we think about our risk of contracting COVID-19?    Two eminent psychologists and friends of EPA answer the question in a recent NBCNEWS article.  Edward Wasserman is the Stuit professor of psychological and brain sciences at The University of Iowa.  At this year’s EPA virtual conference, Ed delivered the R.L. Solomon Distinguished lecture entitled, “Precrastination, Anticipation, and Signalization:Implications For Adaptive Action.”  Thomas Zentall is the DiSilvestro professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, an EPA Fellow and past president of EPA.

You can read the article here.  

Statement From EPA on systemic racism

In this moment when the institutional and systemic racism of our culture has been brought into focus by worldwide condemnation of the callous and brutal murder of Black individuals by the police, the EPA Board of Directors is considering our responsibility as a scientific organization to reduce racism. We are taking an uncomfortable look at ourselves as professionals and EPA as an organization.  Although none of us condones the inequalities in education, health care, and justice that are systemic in our country, we recognize that we cannot remain silent about them while fulfilling our mission to present and advance the science of psychology in our annual meetings.  We need to acknowledge that the lack of diversity within the leadership of EPA reflects the fact that we have not had an intentional and organized strategy to include and support our colleagues of color.  This is unacceptable. Therefore, EPA is developing an action plan that builds upon the science of psychology to address the inequities and racism that we and many others have identified.  

Our plan of action includes: 1] a commitment to themes for our next two meetings that specifically address aspects of systemic racism in historical context (2021) and in our educational system (2022); 2] a commitment to recruiting and mentoring members of underrepresented groups into the EPA leadership and conference programming; 3] a commitment to the long-term by establishing concrete, measurable actions to be met annually and that will be shared with our community.  This needs to be a long-term commitment as only sustained effort will bring about change.  This year for the first time we have some content contributed by the SPARK Society, an organization of cognitive scientists of color, as a part of our meeting.  We will work to include more organizations like SPARK.  Psychological research has shown all too clearly that bias is a part of everything we do; EPA as a scientific society is committed to finding ways to mitigate that bias within ourselves and the wider world.  

WHO WE ARE

Eastern Psychological Association (EPA) was founded in 1896 and is the oldest of the regional Psychological Associations in the United States. Its sole purpose is to advance the science and profession through the dissemination of professional information about the field of Psychology. EPA achieves this goal by conducting its annual meeting where the members of EPA present the latest advances in professional and scientific work to their colleagues. EPA welcomes psychologists from all fields across the discipline.

By becoming a member of Eastern Psychological Association, you 'join hands' with a group whose interests are as varied as the field itself. EPA proudly counts Psychologists of every stripe as members from clinicians to neuroscientists; from experimental psychologists of every type to applied psychologists in private practice, industry and the military. EPA represents all of the richness of our field, and EPA welcomes you to the community of psychology. We encourage you to join and be an active participant.  Read More