Shelley Taylor
American social and health psychologist
UCLA psychologist who co-wrote Social Cognition with Susan Fiske, argued with Jonathon Brown that positive illusions can support mental health, and proposed the tend-and-befriend response to stress.
Why this person matters
Taylor helped establish both social cognition and health psychology as research areas. Her tend-and-befriend proposal challenged the view that stress responses are only fight or flight. The positive illusions claim, made with Jonathon Brown, challenged the idea that accurate self-perception is always healthiest.
Main contributions
Social cognition
She co-authored Social Cognition (1984) with Susan Fiske. A second edition followed in 1991, and the sequel Social Cognition: From Brains to Culture in 2007.
Positive illusions
Taylor and Jonathon Brown (1988) argued that people tend to see themselves and their future more positively than is objectively likely, and that these illusions can support mental health. She later wrote the book Positive Illusions (1989).
Tend-and-befriend
Proposed in 2000 by Taylor and colleagues, it offers an alternative to fight-or-flight, holding that under stress people, especially women, often seek social bonds and care for others. Her book The Tending Instinct (2002) developed the idea.
Context and limits
Shedler, Mayman and Manis (1993) argued that positive illusions may not be adaptive, reporting that people with overly positive views appeared maladjusted in clinical interviews. Her health psychology grew from interviews with women with breast cancer, which led to her theory of cognitive adaptation (1983). The sources read do not report replications of tend-and-befriend.
In your introductory course
Stress, health and wellbeing.Taylor appears in stress and coping (tend-and-befriend) and in social cognition. Students may also meet positive illusions in the self and well-being sections.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 14.1. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1972
Received her PhD in social psychology from Yale.
- 1979
Joined the UCLA faculty.
- 1984
Published Social Cognition with Susan Fiske.
- 1988
Published the positive illusions paper with Jonathon Brown.
- 2000
Published the tend-and-befriend account of stress responses with colleagues.
Sources
- American Academy of Political and Social Science, About Shelley E. TaylorSociety or association. Institutional biography inspected.
- Wikipedia, Shelley E. TaylorReference work. Reference article inspected.