Peter Salovey

Peter Salovey, Provost at Yale University, is the Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology and a Professor of Management and of Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale. He directs the Health, Emotion and Behavior Laboratory . He also has affiliations with the Yale Cancer Center and the Institution for Social and Policy Studies.

Professor Salovey received an A.B. in Psychology and a co-terminal M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University in 1980. He holds three Yale degrees in psychology: an M.S. (1983), M.Phil. (1984), and Ph.D. (1986). Salovey was President of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate at Yale in 1983-84. He joined the Yale faculty as an assistant professor in 1986 and has been a full professor since 1995.

Salovey's research has focused on the psychological significance and function of human moods and emotions, and the application of social psychological principles to motivate people to adopt behaviors that protect their health. His work concerns the ways in which emotions facilitate adaptive cognitive and behavioral functioning. With John D. Mayer, he developed a broad framework, coined "emotional intelligence," to describe how people understand, manage and use their emotions. With John Mayer and David Caruso he developed ways to measure emotional intelligence as a set of abilities. Their Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) was published by Multi-Health Systems in 2002. Much of his current work concerns the predictive validity of emotional intelligence in schools, workplaces, and social relations.

Salovey’s work on health behavior has included field experiments evaluating how educational and public health messages can best be tailored to promote prevention and early detection behaviors relevant to cancer and HIV/AIDS.

Salovey's research has been funded by a Presidential Young Investigator (PYI) Award from the National Science Foundation and grants from the National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Drug Abuse, American Cancer Society, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Ethel F. Donaghue Women's Health Investigator Program. He served a three-year term on the National Science Foundation's social psychology study section, and was a member of the NIH behavioral science working group on translational research in mental health. He completed a four-year term on the NIMH National Advisory Mental Health Council in 2007.

Salovey has published more than 300 articles and chapters, and he has authored, coauthored, or edited 13 books including Peer counseling: Skills and perspectives; Reasoning, inference, and judgment in clinical psychology; The psychology of jealousy and envy; Psychology; The remembered self: Emotion and memory in personality; Peer counseling: Skills, ethics, and perspectives; Emotional development and emotional intelligence; At play in the fields of consciousness; Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT): User's manual; The wisdom in feeling: Psychological processes in emotional intelligence; Key readings in the social psychology of health; and The Emotionally Intelligent Manager. He edits the Guilford Press series Emotions and Social Behavior, and he has served as Editor or Associate Editor for three scientific journals: Psychological Bulletin, Review of General Psychology, and Emotion.

Salovey, who has taught the Introductory Psychology course since his first days on the faculty, was awarded the William Clyde DeVane Medal for Distinguished Scholarship and Teaching in Yale College in 2000 and the Lex Hixon Prize for Teaching in the Social Sciences at Yale in 2002. In his leisure time, Salovey plays stand-up bass with The Professors of Bluegrass.