Catherine Sanderson *97 PSY
Professor, Author, Keynote Speaker
Poler Family Professor of Psychology, Amherst College
Catherine Sanderson received a bachelor’s degree in psychology, with a specialization in health and development, from Stanford University, and received master’s and doctoral degrees in psychology from Princeton. Her research has received grant funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Sanderson has published more than 25 journal articles and book chapters in addition to college and secondary school textbooks. In 2012, she was named one of the country’s top 300 professors by the Princeton Review. Sanderson has written books on parenting as well as how mindset influences happiness, health and how long we live (“The Positive Shift.”) Her latest trade book, published in North America as “Why We Act: Turning Bystanders Into Moral Rebels” and internationally as “The Bystander Effect: The Psychology of Courage and Inaction,” examines why good people often stay silent or do nothing in the face of wrongdoing. Sanderson speaks regularly for public and corporate audiences, on topics such as the science of happiness, the power of emotional intelligence and growth mindset, the art of aging well, and the psychology of courage and inaction.