Robert M. Arkin, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology in the Social Psychology program at The Ohio State University. Bob was Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of Missouri, Columbia (1976-1984), and was Professor of Psychology and held the Middlebush Chair in Psychology there when he moved to Ohio State as Undergraduate Dean (serving eight years). He has been Associate Editor of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and has also served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology and Social Psychology Quarterly, Psychology and Marketing, and just completed a six year term as Editor of the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology (Taylor and Francis; www.basp.osu.edu). He is Editor of the forthcoming volume Most Underappreciated: Fifty Eminent Social Psychologists... published by Oxford University Press, The Handbook of the Uncertain Self (with co-editors Kathy Oleson and Patrick Carroll) published by Psychology Press, and he is now writing a volume entitled How to Read a Lot . . . and is co-authoring (with Jonathon Brown) a revision of the textbook The Self, for Psychology Press. Arkin’s research is centered on the self in social interaction, with a special emphasis on the uncertain self. He brings three decades of interest in attribution processes and general issues of motivation, achievement, and social perception to bear on specific current research interests of self-doubt, self-handicapping and overachievement, and personal security and insecurity in the post 9/11 era.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Bob Arkin attended UCLA (BA, 1972) and USC (Ph.D., 1976). He lives in a suburban community in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife Carol (a practicing Clinical Psychologist, specializing in children and families) and three children (all boys, in every sense; two now in college at Northwestern University and one a sophomore in high school).

Visit him online at http://faculty.psy.ohio-state.edu/arkin/lab.php.