SPECIAL SECTION
SENIORS FEMALE SCIENTIST
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studying children’s sympathy and pro-
social behavior,” she told Jewish News.

There was little research on children
and regulation when she turned her focus
to the topic in the late 1980s and what
did exist was done with “pretty primitive
methods like self-reporting,” she said.

She was on the ground floor devel-
oping new research methods, such as
physiological factors — like heart rate
and skin conductance — and using mul-
tiple reporters and behavioral measures
in studies.

“Now, self-regulation is one of the big-
gest constructs in developmental psychol-
ogy, but when we started, it was barely on
the map,” she said. “I was one of the first
people doing a number of these topics in
any depth.”
Traditionally, psychologists emphasized
cognitive development with much less
focus on social and emotional develop-
ment. By the 1990s, however, it was
becoming a topic in textbooks and hand-
books. In 2000, the National Academy
of Science released “From Neurons to
Neighborhoods,” which stated outright
that self-regulation is foundational to
most development.

“It was a huge construct, and nobody
was looking at it,” Eisenberg said.

The bulk of Eisenberg’s research has
been on sympathy for others, a willing-
ness to help others and self-regulation.

She looks at connections between self-
regulation and prosocial behavior, school
performance and various aspects of chil-
dren’s social and academic functioning.

“Self-regulation is incredibly impor-
tant,” she said.

The ability to self-regulate, or control
one’s attention and behavior, and inhibit
oneself and focus attention as needed
to adapt to a situation, is important to
development. Moreover, the ability to
self-regulate emotions is also related to
feeling concern for others because it is
easier to have sympathy for someone
when you’re not at risk of being over-
whelmed by someone else’s emotions.

“If you can’t manage your emotions,
you’re also more likely to develop symp-
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JEWISH NEWS
She convinced some of her younger col-
leagues to start studying the development
of children’s concern for “out-group”
members, or those who are not in one’s
“in-group.” In other words, she wants
to know how people develop concern
toward those they don’t associate as
friends, family or neighbors.

Some people are very sympathetic to
in-group members but would still harm
out-group members. Sympathy and con-
cern from in-group members do not nec-
essarily generalize to out-group members,
and this is a less-studied phenomenon and
gives her more impetus to investigate it.

Her analysis is ongoing but so far, it’s
clear that “parental attitudes matter.

Exposure to diversity matters. Kids’ self-
regulation matters. Exposure to diversity
is good and parental attitudes about valu-
ing diversity, not holding prejudice, or
biased attitudes seem to be important,”
she said.

Parents or teachers may say they are
“color blind” to avoid talking about race.

She said that view is associated with kids
being less positive toward out-group
members. “It is better if parents talk about things
that another group might be exposed to or
why they might be upset or what they have
to deal with — at a kid’s level,” she said.

“Ignoring race is not making it go
away,” she said. “Recognizing that there
are issues that affect people differently
that people are treated differently, and
talking about that in a way that helps kids
understand, is probably a good thing — if
you want kids who are less prejudiced.”
Eisenberg started her career when few
women were making significant strides
in the sciences and feels lucky that she
“hit the market at the right time,” when
things were starting to change. While still
in college, she had two female role mod-
els in her psychology department who
encouraged her, and she started applying
for teaching positions when universities
wanted to add women to their rosters.

Other than hearing a few negative
stereotypes from male colleagues about
women not needing raises since their
husbands’ salaries mattered more and
suggestions that nursing women “are
crazy,” she doesn’t feel that she suffered
directly from sexism in her career.

“I think there were more indirect ways
that women could suffer, like not being
asked to be editors, presidents of societies,
etc.,” she said.

Eisenberg started ASU’s developmen-
tal psychology program and worked
to attract competitive students to it.

Looking back, she is most proud of her
students, many of whom she still knows
and collaborates with.

She’s also proud that she was named the
first female editor of a major psychology
journal, Psychological Bulletin, in 1996.

“I definitely felt I was breaking a glass
ceiling,” she said. JN
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