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Biographical Sketch, 2003 
Ed Diener is Alumni Professor of Psychology (Distinguished chair endowed by the alumni) at the University of Illinois. Dr. Diener received his Ph.D. at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1974, and has been a faculty member at the University of Illinois ever since. He is past-president of the International Society of Quality of Life Studies, and is past-president of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (and Division 8 of APA). Professor Diener is the editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1998-2003) and is also editor of Journal of Happiness Studies. He won the 2000 Distinguished Researcher Award from the International Society of Quality of Life Studies, and a distinguished alumni award from California State University at Fresno. In 2001, Professor Diener was selected to speak in the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Lecture Series. Diener has about 180 publications, of which about 140 are in the area of subjective well-being (SWB). He was listed as the second most published author in the first 30 years of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and currently has 46 publications in this journal. Professor Diener is the Chair of the Positive Experience Network of the Positive Psychology Initiative. His citation count is approximately 8,000. Diener is a Fellow of ISQOLS, APS, APA, and Divisions 3 and 8 of APA. Professor Diener’s research focuses on several areas: the measurement of subjective well-being; temperament and personality influences on SWB; theories of well-being; demographics and well-being (e.g., income, sex, and age); and most recently his work has emphasized cultural influences on subjective well-being. Diener uses experience-sampling methodology for recording subjective well-being, but also has conducted laboratory studies as well as large-scale surveys across many cultures. Ed Diener has edited three recent books on SWB: Well-being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology (with Kahneman and Schwarz), Advances in Quality of Life Studies (with Don Rahtz), and Culture and Subjective Well-Being (with Eunkook Suh). Diener has won several teaching awards: the University of Illinois psychology department graduate student award, the Psi Chi undergraduate award, the Mabel Hohenboken Teaching Development Award, the Panhellenic Teaching Appreciation Award, and the Oakley-Kundee Award for Undergraduate Teaching. Several of his former graduate students and post-docs have won national early scientific career awards. Personal Biography Ed Diener was born on July 25, 1946 in Glendale, California. He grew up on a farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California, near Fresno. He attended San Joaquin Memorial High School in Fresno, where he met his wife, Carol. They have been married since 1966, and they have five children: Marissa and Mary Beth (twins), Robert, Kia, and Susan, and six grandchildren. His wife, Carol, is a clinical psychologist who is also an attorney, and teaches psychology and the law at the University of Illinois. His daughter, Marissa, is a developmental psychologist who is a professor at the University of Utah. Her twin sister, Mary Beth, has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and teaches at the University of Kentucky. His son, Robert, has a masters degree in clinical psychology, and is involved in cross-cultural research on well-being. He is a Ph.D. student in the Social Psychology program at the University of Utah. The youngest two children, Kia and Susan, are not in the field of psychology. |
