Introduction to Michael A. Hogg's SPSSI Kurt Lewin Award Address

It is a great pleasure to write this introduction to Michael Hogg's Kurt Lewin Award address. I first met Michael Hogg (Mike) in 1983 at the University of Bristol where he had just completed his PhD supervised by John Turner, and where Mike and I were appointed as assistant professors responsible for the whole social psychology program. We were temporary substitutes for Turner (who had moved to Australia) and Howard Giles, who had moved to California. We became great friends and lifelong collaborators. In 1985 Mike moved to a postdoc with Turner at Macquarie University in Sydney, and subsequently an associate professorship at the University of Melbourne in 1986 and then on to the University of Queensland, from 1991. There he founded the Centre for Research on Group Processes. After a period as visiting professor at Princeton University from 1997 to 1998, and an Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow at Queensland from 2004 to 2006, he moved to Claremont Graduate University in Los Angeles where he directs the prestigious social identity research laboratory.

Mike's phenomenal research output has earned him fellowships and recognition from all of the major professional societies in his field. These include his election as a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (1991), the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI, 2003); the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP, 2009); the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP, 2009); and the Association for Psychological Science (2010). He served as council member of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology in 2012, and was then elected its president in 2013, a rare example of a non-North American holding that position. His achievements have also been recognized through the 2020 Distinguished Lifetime Career Award from the International Society for Self and Identity, the 2021 SPSP Campbell Award for distinguished achievement and sustained excellence, and, celebrated here, the 2022 SPSSI Kurt Lewin Award.

As one of the most direct descendants of the Tajfel/Billig/Turner/Giles group, Mike has been a central figure in bringing social identity theory to international prominence. His early work with Turner provided one of the cornerstones of self-categorization theory, establishing both the empirical foundations and communicating the details of the theory. But most importantly it is his subsequent work to connect and engage with researchers in other parts of the discipline, by inviting contributions to edited collections, arranging conferences and seminars, and engaging with their interests so energetically, that enabled the social identity perspective to shift from being a niche European theory to a central and mainstream part of social psychology. In fact it is hard to envisage any current social psychological work on intergroup relations or group processes in social psychology that does not invoke social identity. His work on social identity features in every social psychology course. In sum, Mike's work has had huge impact in psychology and social sciences as a whole and he stands as one of the most influential proponents of social identity theory globally.

A central theme throughout his research is that social identity is involved in all aspects of group life, meaning that it pervades processes and behavior within groups just as much as relations between groups. This emphasis can be seen not only in the titles of his books and articles, but also as a clear part of his mission to link the formerly contrasting perspectives of European and North American research on groups. It is inherent in the his co-founding and continuing editorship of the journal Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, now celebrating its 25th year.

Mike's research has spanned a vast array of phenomena, ranging from the nature of group cohesion (e.g., Hogg, 1993), to the role of language as a signifier of identity, and from leadership (e.g., Hogg & Rast, 2022; Hogg et al., 2012) to extremism (e.g., Hogg, 2014), from fundamental motivational elements of group life (e.g., Abrams & Hogg, 1988) to the cognitive determinants of the content of identity. He has studied the way that minorities can influence majorities (e.g., Hogg, 2010), how social identity motivates social inclusion and exclusion and how people manage the uncertainty in their lives through their psychological attachments to different groups (e.g., Hogg, 2021a, 2021b).

Those who have worked under his supervision and guidance are distributed globally and themselves have highly successful careers. His own inspiring leadership style inspires excitement and a hunger for knowledge and exploration. His ambassadorial role for the field is extensive, including his roles as chief and associate editor on major journals in the field, his authoritative monographs, cutting-edge edited collections, and highly successful and long running international text-books (e.g., Hogg & Vaughan, 2022). His work to draw together scholars from across the globe has involved collaborations with distinguished professors from every continent, and from neuroscience to management and business psychology.

Mike's 400 or so publications include 54 books and special issues, and include 4 invited papers for Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, the Carol and Ed Diener SPSP award for outstanding contributions to personality and social psychology, and many awards for individual papers. It is barely worth checking his various citation indices as these advance so quickly as to be rapidly out of date and are already well above 100,000 citations. They include 20 works with over 1000 citations and Google Scholar places him 39th of scholars in the whole of psychology In the following address he sets out his ideas in a typically eloquent and persuasive style. Not only does he provide a compelling account of how and why people seek and nourish extremism, but also the vital importance of understanding the leadership dynamics that may either foster or help to mitigate such phenomena. These are crucial issues where powerful theory and compelling research are essential for enabling the world to progress freer from conflict, chaos and division. Mike's commitment to the mission of making social psychology matter, and particularly to bring it to bear on the most pressing issues of our times, embodies SPSSI's goals and ethos, and of course is in the best Lewinian tradition. I congratulate him on receiving the 2022 SPSSI Kurt Lewin Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Development and Integration of Psychological Research and Social Action.