Shelley Taylor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shelley Taylor is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University, and was formerly on the faculty at Harvard University.
A prolific author of books and scholarly journal articles, Taylor has long been a leading figure in two subfields related to her primary discipline of social psychology. These subfields are social cognition and health psychology.
Among her professional honors, Taylor received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association in 1996.
Her books include The Tending Instinct and Social Cognition, the latter by Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor.
Quote from Taylor: "Rather than perceiving themselves, the world, and the future accurately, most people regard themselves, their circumstances, and the future as considerably more positive than is objectively likely.... These illusions are not merely characteristic of human thought; they appear actually to be adaptive, promoting rather than undermining good mental health." (PSYCHOLOGY: Themes and Variations, 2004, Sixth Edition by Wayne Weiten. page 533)
