Roy Baumeister

Roy F. Baumeister (/ˈbaʊmaɪstər/; born May 16, 1953) is an American social psychologist who is known for his work on the self, social rejection, belongingness, sexuality and sex differences, self-control, self-esteem, self-defeating behaviors, motivation, aggression, consciousness, and free will.

Baumeister earned his A.B. from Princeton University and his M.A. from Duke University. He returned to Princeton University with his mentor Edward E. Jones and earned his Ph.D. from the university's Department of Psychology in 1978.

Baumeister then taught at Case Western Reserve University from 1979 to 2003, serving as a professor of psychology and later liberal arts. He later worked at Florida State University as the Francis Eppes Eminent Scholar and head of the social psychology graduate program. At FSU, Baumeister worked in the psychology department, teaching classes and graduate seminars on social and evolutionary psychology. In 2016 he moved to the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland in Australia, where he taught for several years.

He is a fellow of both the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the Association for Psychological Science. Baumeister was named an ISI highly cited researcher in 2003 and 2014.

Baumeister has researched social psychology for over four decades and made a name for himself with his laboratory research. His research focuses on six themes: self-control, decision-making, the need to belong and interpersonal rejection, human sexuality, irrational and self-destructive behavior, and free will. He is the most cited author of a series of psychology journals focusing on personalities, such as Psychological Bulletin, Journal of Personality, Personality and Social Psychology Review (T&F), and Psychological Science in the Public Interest. 

Baumeister has conducted research on the self, focusing on various concepts related to how people perceive, act, and relate to their selves. Baumeister wrote a chapter titled "The Self" in The Handbook of Social Psychology and reviewed the research on self-esteem, concluding that the perceived importance of self-esteem is overrated.

In a series of journal articles and books, Baumeister inquired about the reasons for self-defeating behavior. His conclusions: there is no self-defeating urge (as some have thought). Rather, self-defeating behavior is either a result of trade-offs (enjoying drugs now at the expense of the future), backfiring strategies (eating a snack to reduce stress only to feel more stressed), or a psychological strategy to escape the self – where various self-defeating strategies are rather directed to relieve the burden of selfhood.