Psychology Prof. Wendi Gardner joined Northwestern’s faculty in 1996 as her first job post-graduation. She’s been here ever since.
Gardner is particularly interested in social inclusion and self-identity, and teaches several related undergraduate courses, including “Positive Psychology: The Science of Well-Being” and “Introduction to Psychology.”
Gardner grew up in South Florida, just west of Fort Lauderdale. After leaving a BS/MD program at the University of Miami, Gardner worked at a deli for several years, which she said was “ridiculous amounts of fun.” She finished her undergraduate degree at Florida Atlantic University, where she discovered a passion for social psychology. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in social neuroscience from The Ohio State University.
The Daily spoke to Gardner about her time at Northwestern and the changing world of social psychology.
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
The Daily: You’ve been with the school for 30 years. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen throughout the years?
Gardner: In terms of the actual student body and student experiences, one big shift that I noticed that actually ended up really affecting my teaching was that students had a shift in well-being. Students have become more anxious, more hard on themselves or more perfectionistic. The talent of our student body hasn’t changed. If anything, the talent of our student body may have increased, but the anxiety level has as well.
And this is a generational shift, it’s not just Northwestern. You can actually look across generations, and you see lower well-being and rising anxiety. For the first ten, 12, 15 years I was here, I taught a class on emotion … and the last unit in that class was always on happiness.
It got to a point that my students were like, ‘We need a class just on this unit. This is the unit we need, right? We’re good with the fear and anger, can we just have more of this?’ And so that’s when I developed a class on positive psychology. What do psychologists know about well-being and how to foster well-being, as opposed to just what we know about clinical disorders or mental illness? Thriving is different from just the absence of mental illness. What can students learn that’s evidence-based, that’s science-based, that they can then take into their own lives that will help them actively bolster their own well-being?
The Daily: Can you walk me through a few of your favorite courses you’ve taught over the years?
Gardner: I really enjoy all the courses I teach, but I love my Intro to Psych course because I get to teach it in Fall Quarter. What that means is I get a ton of first quarter first-years, and just being part of the welcome to college, the welcome to the land of big ideas, where you’re with a bunch of other nerds who are really excited about thinking about ideas, watching people light up and find one another and chatter with one another about the human mind and all the wonderful things it does — is just super fun.
The Daily: One of the things that has seemed to have grown (over the past few decades) is the conversation about mental health. How does that affect the way people approach psychology and what psychologists focus on?
Gardner: It’s a really wonderful thing, and this has happened in my adulthood — I got to watch it happen. There was a lowering of stigma against people suffering from, for example, depression or a generalized anxiety disorder. People felt more comfortable being able to talk about their symptoms and more importantly, being able to seek help for their symptoms. That is spectacular. …
What has burbled into the pop psych realm, or public domain realm, that is maybe less ideal is the psychologizing or mental illness claiming of normal human experiences … Because there’s greater awareness of mental illness, which I think is spectacular, the downside of that is I think people worry more about their own fragility than maybe they should.
One of the most reassuring literatures in the field of psychology, empirically, based strongly on the data, is how resilient humans are. We bounce really well, actually, and I think there is less knowledge in the public domain of that resilience than there should be.
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