Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Biosketch

Phoebe C. Ellsworth is the Frank Murphy Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Law (emerita) at the University of Michigan. She received her AB in Social Relations summa cum laude at Harvard (1965) and her PhD in Social Psychology at Stanford (1970). She taught at Yale from 1971-1981, at Stanford from 1981-1987, and spent the rest of her career at the University of Michigan. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Psychological Association, and the Association for Psychological Science. She has served on the Boards of the Law and Society Association, the International Society for Research on Emotion, and the Russell Sage Foundation, and is currently on the Board of Directors of the Death Penalty Information Center. She has been awarded the American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal Award for Lifetime Achievement in Psychology, the APS James McKeen Cattell Award for Lifetime Achievement in Applied Research, the SESP Distinguished Scientist Award, the SPSP Career Contribution and Legacy Awards, as well as awards from APA, APS, and SPSP for excellence in mentoring.

Research Interests

Phoebe Ellsworth has two distinct research interests.

First, she studies emotion, and was one of the originators of the appraisal theory of emotion. According to this theory, emotions are elicited and differentiated by an organism’s appraisal of its circumstances and their relevance to its well-being, and provide both an assessment of the situation and the motivation to respond appropriately. Differences in individual and cultural appraisals of a situation account for differences in emotional experience, and changes in emotion correspond to changes in appraisals. Emotions are not static, categorically distinct states, but are processes, constantly changing as the perceiver’s appraisals change, and therefore providing a potentially infinite variety of emotional experiences, far more than the categories provided by a particular language. The appraisals that are most important in differentiating emotions are perceptions of novelty, valence, certainty, agency (who or what caused the event), goal conduciveness, ability to control the event, and morality.

Ellsworth’s second main research interest is in the field of Psychology and Law, including public opinion on the death penalty, jury decision making, and the relationships between law and social science.