Prospective memory Meacham initiated the study of
prospective memory, a research subject in
cognitive psychology and other fields, in the early 1970s. Prospective memory is information with implications for actions to be performed in the future, such as stopping at the store on the way home, and can be distinguished from
retrospective memory, concerned solely with recall of information from the past. Meacham was the first to introduce this distinction, along with the term
prospective memory, at a
University of Rochester colloquium in December 1974 and subsequently at the Chicago meeting of the
American Psychological Association in September 1975. Prospective memory received wide attention when
Ulric Neisser included the APA paper in his 1982
edited volume,
Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Contexts.
The loss of wisdom Meacham argued that the essence of
wisdom is holding the attitude that knowledge is fallible and striving for a balance between knowing and doubting. In a chapter published in
Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins, and Development (1990) Meacham wrote, "To be wise is not to know particular facts but to know without excessive confidence or excessive cautiousness. Wisdom is thus not a belief, a value, a set of facts, a corpus of knowledge or information in some specialized area, or a set of special abilities or skills. Wisdom is an attitude taken by persons toward the beliefs, values, knowledge, information, abilities, and skills that are held, a tendency to doubt that these are necessarily true or valid and to doubt that they are an exhaustive set of those things that could be known." Thus, the challenge of being wise is to maintain the balance between acquiring more knowledge, on the one hand, and discovering new uncertainties, doubts, and questions, on the other. Meacham questioned the common belief that wisdom increases as people grow older. Instead, he argued that wisdom is accessible to people of all ages, including children; nevertheless, wisdom decreases for most people as they grow older.
Multiculturalism and diversity in undergraduate education In the late 1980s, Meacham worked with other
University at Buffalo faculty to advocate for, design, and teach
American Pluralism, a required general education course on race, gender, ethnicity, social class, and religion in American society. This course quickly became a national model for multicultural and diversity courses on other college and university campuses. Meacham’s interests turned, in the 1990s, to innovative methods for teaching and for assessing how much students have learned. He served as a consultant for the
Association of American Colleges and Universities for eighteen years, including five years at the Asheville (North Carolina) Institutes on General Education (1999-2013), where he provided workshops on student-centered pedagogy, assessment of student learning, student intellectual development, and diversity in higher education. Meacham also served for a decade on the advisory board of
Liberal Education, AAC&U’s flagship journal (1996-2006). Meacham has argued that, given the importance of
Islam in world history and recent American events, America’s colleges and universities should require students to become more familiar with and knowledgeable about the religion of Islam.
Developmental theory About a fifth of Meacham’s articles and chapters, beginning in the 1970s, addressed theory in
developmental psychology. From 1978 to 1987, he edited the journal
Human Development, published in Basel, Switzerland and focused on developmental theory. In his earlier writing, Meacham was influenced by
Klaus F. Riegel,
Hans G. Furth,
Paul Baltes, and
Jean Piaget and, later, by
Jurgen Habermas. Recently, Meacham drew on Stephen Pepper’s
World Hypotheses. Pepper describes conceptual systems with four root metaphors: formism, mechanism, contextualism, and organicism. For Meacham, these metaphors suggested contrasting perspectives on children’s actions, namely, self-reflection, behaving, interpreting, or self-organization; four perspectives on children’s voice, including self-awareness, speaking, cooperating, or conversation; and four perspectives on children’s identity, including discovering who one is, being made by others, making oneself, or growing into one’s potential. In a 2015 chapter, Meacham used Pepper's
World Hypotheses metaphors to introduce four families of theories of children’s development. For example, parents and teachers educate children by drawing forth, instructing and training, encouraging creativity, or providing conditions for growth. Similarly, children respond to education by discovering and expressing, learning and acquiring, questioning and creating, or solving problems and resolving conflicts.
Political polarization in America In
Talking Sense about Politics: How to Overcome Political Polarization in Your Next Conversation, Meacham argued that American politics is better understood not from two opposing political identities (right vs. left, conservative vs. liberal) but from four fundamental, impartial perspectives—detached, loyal, caring, and tactful—that underlie how people think about and respond to political issues. These four perspectives can be seen as similar to Pepper's
World Hypotheses metaphors (formism, mechanism, contextualism, and organicism). Meacham argued that how we talk about controversial issues in American society, not changing our political institutions, is the remedy for political polarization. ==Publications==