Dolores Albarracín, a world-renowned social psychologist, is the Amy Gutmann University Professor, with joint appointments in the Annenberg School for Communication and the Department of Psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences.

Albarracín, just elected as President of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, studies persuasion, belief formation, motivation, and behavioral change, especially related to health behaviors. Currently Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she was Martin Fishbein Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School for Communication from 2012-2014. This year, she published Action and Inaction in a Social World: Predicting and Changing Attitudes and Behavior, and she has published four other books – including three volumes of the landmark and widely used Handbook of Attitudes – and close to 200 journal articles and book chapters. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and she recently received the Avant-Garde Award from the National Institute of Drug Abuse, which supports “individual scientists of exceptional creativity who propose high-impact, bold basic research,” as well as awards for Outstanding Mid-Career Contributions in Social Psychology and Outstanding Scientific Contributions to Research on Attitudes and Social Influence from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

Born in Argentina, Albarracín served from 2014 to 2020 as Editor-in-Chief of Psychological Bulletin and currently leads the Social Action Lab, which advances her pioneering research into such questions as: Why and how do we form attitudes? How can we persuade others to engage in socially beneficial behaviors, especially related to health outcomes? How can interventions and campaigns be designed to motivate better health outcomes for different groups? She earned a PhD and MA in Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, along with a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the Universidad de Belgrano in Buenos Aires, a BA in Psychology from the Universidad Católica de La Plata, and a BA in Letters from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata.