Saul Kassin is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and
Massachusetts Professor Emeritus at Williams College. Born and raised in New York City, he graduated
from Brooklyn College in 1974. After receiving his Ph D from the University of Connecticut in 1978,
he spent time at the University of Kansas, Purdue University, the Federal Judicial Center, and Stanford
University. He is an author or editor of several books—including Psychology, Developmental Social
Psychology, The American Jury on Trial, Duped: Why Innocent People Confess – and Why We Believe Their
Confessions, and most recently, The Pillars of Social Psychology. Interested in the psychology of wrongful
convictions, Kassin pioneered the scientific study of false confessions for which he has received several
awards—including the APA Award for Distinguished Contribution to Research on Public Policy and
the APS James Mc Keen Cattell Lifetime Achievement Award for Applied Research. He has consulted
on many high-profile cases, served as an analyst on all major news networks, and appeared in several
podcasts and documentaries—including Ken Burns’s 2012 film, The Central Park Five.
Steven Fein is Professor of Psychology at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts. Born
and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey, he received his AB from Princeton University and his Ph D in
social psychology from the University of Michigan. He has been teaching at Williams College since
1991, with time spent teaching at Stanford University in 1999. His edited books include Emotion:
Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Readings in Social Psychology: The Art and Science of Research, and
Motivated Social Perception: The Ontario Symposium. He has served on the executive committee of the
Society of Personality and Social Psychology and as the social and personality psychology representative
at the American Psychological Association. His research interests concern stereotyping and prejudice,
suspicion and attributional processes, social influence, and self-affirmation theory.
Hazel Rose Markus is the Davis-Brack Professor in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
She codirects Stanford SPARQ (Social Psychological Answers to Real-world Questions) and was previously
the director of the Research Institute of the Stanford Center for Comparative Studies in Race
and Ethnicity. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Before moving to Stanford in
1994, she was a professor at the University of Michigan, where she received her Ph D. Her work focuses
on how the self-system, including current conceptions of self and possible selves, lends meaning and
structure to experience. Born in England and raised in San Diego, she has been persistently fascinated
by how nation of origin, region of the country, gender, ethnicity, race, religion, and social class shape
self and identity. With her colleague Shinobu Kitayama, she has pioneered the experimental study of
how culture and self influence one another. Markus is a member of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences and the British Academy, and she is the recipient of the APA award for Distinguished
Scientific Contribution and the APS William James Award for Lifetime Achievement. Some of her
recent coedited and coauthored books include Culture and Emotion: Empirical Studies of Mutual
Influence, Engaging Cultural Differences: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies, Just
Schools: Pursuing Equal Education in Societies of Difference, Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century,
and Clash! How to Thrive in a Multicultural World.
