Member since
1976
What he does
James E. Maddux, PhD, was a psychology professor for 30 years, the last 26 of them at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Much of his research focused on self-efficacy and how key social psychology constructs, including motivation and goal-setting, can be applied in clinical psychology. Another academic priority has been to give students a more critical perspective on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. He and co-editor Barbara Winstead, PhD, of Old Dominion University are wrapping up the fourth edition of their textbook Psychopathology: Foundations for a Contemporary Understanding.
A traveling man
Maddux retired from George Mason in 2011. Two years later, he was named a senior scholar at the university's Center for the Advancement of Well-Being — an unpaid gig with a generous travel budget. Charged with being an "international ambassador," Maddux has offered workshops on evidence-based treatment in Bulgaria and Romania and given lectures in Lithuania, Poland and Serbia. Eastern European psychologists had a hard time under Soviet rule, says Maddux, explaining that psychologists were alternately viewed as tools of a repressive state or (in Romania) imprisoned as threats. "Clinical psychology almost came to a standstill in some of these countries," he says.
"I hope I am contributing in some small way to help rebuild clinical psychology in these countries," he says. He has also lectured in Portugal. Maddux travels for fun, too, with ports of call including Cambodia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mali, Tanzania and many western European countries. He has also lived in Berlin and Florence.
Good intentions
A long-time runner and weight-lifter, Maddux is also interested in what he calls the "information-intention-behavior gap." "People know what's good and bad for them, so what keeps them from making the shift from behavior they know is bad to behavior that's good?" To find out, he has dug into the research. One key piece of advice? Pay attention to your successes en route to your goal. "The benefits of exercise sometimes come after two or three years, yet people are often impatient to see instant results," he says. "People need to break exercise down into manageable, measurable pieces so that they can see progress."
In the dungeon
For the last 29 years, Maddux has spent one weekend a year playing Dungeons & Dragons with five friends from his days as a clinical psychology grad student at the University of Alabama, where he earned his doctorate in 1981. "At the beginning, we got together to play the game," he says. "Now the game is just a reason for six very good friends to get together."
— Rebecca A. Clay
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