Wilson is best known for his research on the
adaptive unconscious,
self-knowledge, and
affective forecasting. With
Richard Nisbett, Wilson authored one of psychology's most cited papers, "Telling more than we can know verbal reports on mental processes," that demonstrated the difficulty humans have in introspecting on their own mental processes (
Psychological Review, 1977, cited 2731 times as of May 22, 2007, according to
ISI Web of Knowledge). His longtime collaborator is
Daniel Gilbert of
Harvard University. Wilson has published two popular press books,
Strangers to Ourselves and
Redirect, and co-authored
Social Psychology, an introductory textbook on
social psychology. The textbook has been translated into Italian, Polish, Chinese, German, Russian, and Serbian;
Strangers to Ourselves has been translated into Dutch and Japanese, with Chinese and German editions forthcoming. Wilson received a Bachelor of Arts in
psychology from
Hampshire College in 1973 and a PhD in
social psychology from the
University of Michigan's
Department of Psychology in 1977. From 1977 to 1979, he was a faculty member at
Duke University. Since 1979, he has been a faculty member at the
University of Virginia. His research has been supported by the
National Institute of Mental Health, the
National Science Foundation, and the
Russell Sage Foundation. In 2009, he was named as a fellow to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His work has received numerous awards, including an All-University Outstanding Teaching Award from the
University of Virginia in 2001, as well as the Thomas Jefferson Award for Excellence in Scholarship in 2015. In 2013, he was the recipient of the
Society for Personality and Social Psychology's Donald T. Campbell Award, and in 2015 he was named a William James Fellow by the
Association for Psychological Science. He lives in
Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife, Deirdre Smith. He has two children, Christopher and Leigh. ==Bibliography==