Featured Member

Louis A. Penner

Louis A. Penner was President of SPSSI in 2002-2003. He was awarded a SPSSI service award in 2005 for his many and varied contributions. Most recently, Lou skillfully led the negotiations that have resulted in a strengthened relationship between SPSSI and Wiley Periodicals publishing company.

Louis A. Penner is presently Senior Scientist in the Communication and Behavior Oncology Program at the Karmanos Cancer Institute at Wayne State University as well as Adjunct Research Scientist at Wayne State’s Research Center for Group Dynamics .  He describes his research interests as being in two fairly distinct areas. The first is the causes and consequences of prosocial actions, especially those that occur in an organizational context.  The second is on the causes and consequences of racial/ethnic disparities in medical care.  More specifically, in this area, he looks at the role that racial biases and stereotypes may play in the quality of medical care for African-American patients. Another major research area concerns personal and social variables may affect how well both adults and children cope with treatments for cancer. 
 
Lou is probably most known to SPSSI members for his work on prosocial behavior and volunteering.  His most cited paper in this area was with Marcia Finkelstein.  This 1998 paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology has already been cited 182 times.  His review of Prosocial Behavior (co-authored with John Dovidio, Jane Piliavin and David Schroeder) published in the Annual Review of Psychology has been cited 120 times.  He is the co-author of the books The Psychology of Helping and Altruism:  Problems and Puzzles, published in 1995 (with Schroeder and Dovidio), and   (1995) as well as The Social Psychology of Altruism, published in 2006 (with Dovidio, Piliavin, and Schroeder). His paper on volunteerism was an important contribution to the Journal of Social Issues volume on “Community Involvement:  Theoretical Approaches and Educational Initiatives,” published in 2002.  His Presidential Address was also on volunteerism.   This was published in JSI in 2004.  He is working now on a book on care-giving with Stephanie Brown and Michael Brown.

Click here to watch the Louis Penner interview in the first of SPSSI's podcast series.

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Past Featured Members