Sheldon Cohen

Key takeaways

Sheldon Cohen belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Sheldon Cohen to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Sheldon Cohen from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Sheldon Cohen (born October 11, 1947) is the Robert E. Doherty University Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the director of the Laboratory for the Study of Stress, Immunity and Disease. He is a member of the Department of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon and adjunct professor of Psychiatry and of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Background Cohen received a Bachelor of Philosophy degree from Monteith College at Wayne State University (Detroit) in 1969, and a Ph.D. in social psychology from New York University in 1973. He was Assistant to associate professor of psychology at the University of Oregon from 1973 through 1982, and has been a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh) since 1982. He was named the Robert E. Doherty Professor of Psychology in 2003. Since 1990 he has also been an adjunct professor of Pathology and Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine as well as a member of the Pittsburgh Cancer Institute; from 1999 to 2010 he served as a member of the executive board of the National Institutes of Health Pittsburgh Mind-Body Center. In 1992 he served as the interim director of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute's Behavioral Medicine Program and was the co-director of Pittsburgh's Brain, Behavior, and Immunity Center from 1990 to 1999. He was also a member of the core groups of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health and of the Fetzer Institute's Working Group on Psychosocial Factors in Asthma, and served as chair of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Planning Group on Social Connectedness and Health. Cohen was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2004. He is the recipient of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology (2004), the American Psychological Society's (Now Association for Psychological Science) James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Research in Applied Psychology (2002), the APA's (Division 38) Award for Outstanding Contributions to Health Psychology as a Junior (1987) and Senior (2008) Investigator, the American Psychosomatic Society's Patricia R. Barchas Award for Significant Contributions to the Study of the Impact of Social Behavior on Physiology (2006). He has received the National Institute of Mental Health's Research Scientist Development (1987–1997), and Senior Scientist Awards (1997–2002). He was an American Psychological Association Distinguished Lecturer, and a British Psychological Association Senior Fellow Lecturer. His paper entitled "Social Support, Stress and the Buffering Hypothesis" was named a Current Contents Citation Classic; in 2003 he was named one of Science's Most Cited Authors by the Institute for Scientific Information. Cohen's work focuses on the roles of stress, emotions, social support systems and personality in health and well-being. He published pioneering theoretical and empirical work on the effects of aircraft noise on health and development of schoolchildren, and on the roles of stress and social networks in physical and mental health. With colleagues he has developed a number of scales assessing psychological and social variables including the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), the Interpersonal Support Evaluation Scale (ISEL), the Social Network Index (SNI), the Partner Interaction Questionnaire (PIQ) and the Cohen-Hoberman Inventory of Physical Symptoms (CHIPS). Over the last 30 years he has studied the effects of psychological stress, social support, and social status on immunity and susceptibility to infectious disease. This work attempts to identify the neuroendocrine, immune, and behavioral pathways that link stress, personality, and social networks to disease susceptibility. He is also involved in studies of the effects of psychosocial factors on the onset and progression of asthma, and on the effectiveness of social support interventions in facilitating psychological adjustment and disease progression in women with breast cancer. His current work focuses on how interpersonal dispositions and behaviors influence immunity, host resistance to infectious disease, and on identifying biological pathways linking stress to disease. His research has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and the American Journal of Public Health in addition to other medical, public health, and sociology journals as well as in numerous psychology journals.

Awards and memberships 1987: American Psychological Association's (Division 38) Junior Investigator Award for Outstanding Contributions to Health Psychology 2002: American Psychological Society's (Now Association for Psychological Science) James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Research in Applied Psychology [1] 2003: Highly Cited Author, ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) 2004: Elected to IOM (Institute of Medicine) 2004: American Psychological Association, Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology [2] 2006: American Psychosomatic Society's Patricia R. Barchas Award for Significant Contributions to the Study of the Impact of Social Behavior on Physiology 2008: American Psychological Association's (Division 38) Senior Investigator Award for Outstanding Contributions to Health Psychology 1996-2010: Member, Core Group John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Network on Social Economic (Socioeconomic) Status and Health. 2014: Named one of the 100 Extremely Eminent Psychologists of the Modern Era

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Sheldon Cohen

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Sheldon Cohen claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Sheldon Cohen before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Sheldon Cohen ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Sheldon Cohen

In research: Sheldon Cohen appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Sheldon Cohen in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Sheldon Cohen is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1947 births, 20th-century American psychologists, 21st-century American psychologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Sheldon Cohen outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Sheldon Cohen in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Sheldon Cohen means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Sheldon Cohen out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sheldon Cohen in simple terms?

Sheldon Cohen (born October 11, 1947) is the Robert E. Doherty University Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University.

Why does Sheldon Cohen matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Sheldon Cohen?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Sheldon Cohen.