International Honor Recognizes Powerful Ideas in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

UC Irvine psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, whose research has changed the way scientists and the public view the malleable nature of human memory, has won the 2005 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Psychology, the University of Louisville announced today.

The Grawemeyer Awards were created to honor ideas of great significance and impact in the arts, humanities and social sciences. The award includes a $200,000 prize, which Loftus says she will use to further her research at UCI.

Loftus' work over the past three decades has shown that memory is highly susceptible to distortion and contamination, and that people can be influenced to "remember" experiences that did not actually occur. Her research on false recollections, the reliability of eyewitness reports and memories "recovered" through therapy has affected how law enforcement agencies and the court system consider such testimony.

"I'm honored to be in the company of the amazing psychologists who are previous Grawemeyer winners," Loftus said. "It has been rewarding to do work that has real impact on people's lives, and it's gratifying to receive such a generous award."

This is the fifth awarding of the psychology prize, for which the Grawemeyer Foundation this year received 34 nominations, including three from outside the United States. Loftus is the first woman to win in psychology.

Loftus, a Distinguished Professor in UCI's School of Social Ecology, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She has served as an expert witness or consultant in many nationally publicized cases, including trials involving the Oklahoma City bombing, Michael Jackson, the Menendez brothers and the police officers implicated in the Rodney King beating.

Loftus is the recipient of numerous other awards and honors. The American Psychological Society recognized her "significant lifetime intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology" with the William James Fellow Award in 2001, and the National Academy of Sciences awarded her the inaugural Henry & Bryna David Lectureship in 2002 for "application of the best social and behavioral sciences research to public policy issues."

Ranked among the 25 psychologists most frequently cited in introductory psychology textbooks, Loftus has published more then 350 journal articles and is the author of 20 books, some in third and fifth editions, and many that are translated into other languages. She is author of "Eyewitness Testimony," which won a National Media Award, and co-author of the widely cited book "The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse."

The Grawemeyer Awards were created by Charles Grawemeyer, an industrialist, entrepreneur and University of Louisville graduate, who cherished the liberal arts and created the awards to honor powerful ideas in five areas. The Grawemeyer Foundation at the University of Louisville annually awards $1 million -- $200,000 each for works in music composition, education, religion, psychology and ideas improving world order. The 2005 recipients, all being announced this week, are expected to lecture in Louisville in the spring. Previous winners include former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman. For more information, see www.grawemeyer.org.

About the University of California, Irvine: The University of California, Irvine is a top-ranked public university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Founded in 1965, UCI is among the fastest-growing University of California campuses, with approximately 25,000 undergraduate and graduate students and about 1,300 faculty members. The third-largest employer in dynamic Orange County, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3 billion.

UCI maintains an online directory of faculty available as experts to the media. To access, visit www.today.uci.edu/experts.