49: Frank McAndrew, PhD – Experimental and Evolutionary Social Psychologist and Professor Discusses his Journey, The Power of Gossip, and the Psychology of Creepiness

Masters in Psychology Podcast

Dr. Frank McAndrew was born on a U.S. military base in Germany and grew up in the anthracite coal region of Northeastern Pennsylvania. When Dr. McAndrew started college, he recalls, “I was not at all interested in psychology because, like many people, I didn’t really know what it was about.” He knew that he wanted to become some kind of a scientist, probably a biologist. It wasn’t until he took an introductory psychology class, that he realized “there was this discipline that did all this cool stuff. It was a science. But it was doing a lot of the things that I thought biologists did, running rats through mazes and seeing how the brain works. And so, I got hooked in introduction to psychology.” Dr. McAndrew continued taking biology courses and “an awful lot of English literature courses” because he liked reading the plays and novels as “they were more interesting than textbooks.” He states, “I got a good broad liberal arts kind of education, but psychology was the thing that I really loved the most.” He shares that he decided to go to graduate school simply because he loved being a student and he found out that if he went for a PhD, he would get paid for doing something that he liked to do. He attended the University of Maine for his PhD in Experimental Psychology. In this podcast, Dr. McAndrew shares his academic and professional journey including his experiences when applying to graduate schools and offers advice about this process in hopes that current and future graduate students can learn from his experience. He also offers specific advice to those seeking a graduate degree in experimental psychology. For example, he states, “if we’re talking about a graduate degree in some area of non-clinical psychology, the prestige of the school you go to does matter, and that’s something, especially if you’re looking for an academic job, that carries an awful lot of weight when you’re on the job market.” On the other hand, “when you’re applying for a PhD in experimental psychology, in particular, you’re not really applying to a school, you’re applying to work with an individual.” Dr. McAndrew also offers his thoughts on the important skills that psychology students should develop in order to be successful in their future careers. Dr. McAndrew shares his thoughts on becoming a teacher and professor and discusses the academic lifestyle. After receiving a one-year appointment at Knox College in Galesburg, IL, he found that he liked teaching and the academics and admits that he “agonized” over staying in the academic world for “a good 15 or 20 years” after he started teaching. He said that it didn’t seem like a real job to his relatives because he had too much free time and “didn’t seem to have a boss.” He had many interviews for other jobs in marketing and research “but at the end of the day, whenever these job offers came through it always came down to, ok, I’ll be wearing a suit and I’ll get two weeks’ vacation and I’ll be working on things that other people think are interesting rather than what I think is interesting.” So, he stayed in the academic world and is now the longest-serving psychology professor in the history of Knox College (44 years & counting). In fact, he founded the environmental studies program at Knox and served as Chair of the Department of Psychology for a decade. He is currently the Cornelia H. Dudley Professor of Psychology and teaches introductory psychology, social psychology, industrial psychology, organizational behavior, statistics, evolution and human behavior, environmental psychology, and the history and systems of psychology. Dr. McAndrew is an award-winning teacher, and his research has appeared in dozens of professional and academic journals and is regularly featured in popular media outlets such as NPR, The New York Times, the BBC, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and NBC’s Today Show. His current areas of interest include aggression, gossip, creepiness, and the naming of children.