John J. Skowronski Northern Illinois University, USA
John J. Skowronski, specializing in social cognition under the tutelage of Dr. Donal Carlston, earned his MA (1980) and PhD (1984) from the University of Iowa. Without the patience and persistence of Dr. Carlston, a lifelong friend and collaborator (especially on work exploring trait judgments, including the negativity bias and spontaneous trait inference/transference), he believes he would never have become an academic. He was briefly employed as a visiting assistant professor at Kansas State University (KSU) (1985–1986). However, despite its brevity, this was a crucial time: At KSU, he was mentored by Dr. Charles Thompson in the emerging science of autobiographical memory. In 1986, he moved to a tenure-track job at the Ohio State University (OSU) at Newark. In this undergraduate-focused position, he taught a lot of everything but also (in part because of the generous support of colleagues at OSU, including Dr. Thomas Ostrom and Dr. Marilynn Brewer) managed to keep a research program afloat. Among his many fine OSU undergraduate research assistants was W. Richard Walker, who moved on to do graduate work at KSU with Dr. Thompson. Dr. Walker’s dissertation research was the first to recognize the importance of the FAB, the phenomenon that is explored in the present case. Getting past his initial reluctance, Dr. Walker persuaded him to join in the study of the FAB. The FAB subsequently became a staple of his research program at OSU-Newark, and later at NIU (where he landed in 2000). He counts himself as lucky to have interacted with many superb graduate students at NIU, many of whom were instrumental in pushing forward his research agenda. Meghan Huntoon Lindeman and Bettina Zengel were among the last of those fine students: Entering semi-retirement, he left his tenured position at NIU in 2018. However, at this writing, he continues to collaborate with others on research and expects to continue such activity for some time.
