Faculty Profile and Q & A – Jim Lampinen
Dr. James Lampinen, chair of the Department of Psychological Sciences
Q: Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you decided on psychology as a career?
A: I was born in Waukegan, Illinois. Waukegan is a small city a bit north of Chicago, right near the Wisconsin border along Lake Michigan. I’m the youngest of six kids—three girls and three boys. When I was in fourth grade, we moved to Libertyville, a northwest suburb of Chicago.
In high school, I was a complete science nerd, and I also competed in debate. When I started college, I initially declared as a physics major. I loved physics in high school and I was always good at math. But after a couple of years, something started feeling off. I realized I wanted more than just equations and numbers—I wanted to understand people and I was still interested in public policy and law, from my time in debate. After exploring a few different majors, psychology was the perfect fit. I still got to be a science and math nerd, but in a subject I was more interested in.
Q: What kind of research do you do?
A: I’m a cognitive psychologist, which means I study how people think—things like memory, reasoning, decision-making, attention, categorization, and language processing. I’ve always been interested in the nuts and bolts of how the mind works.
In college, I took a cognitive psychology class and it really meshed with the way I think. I remember reading an article by Elizabeth Loftus, a cognitive psychologist who conducted groundbreaking research on memory. She demonstrated how subtly misleading information could completely alter how people remember events—showing that memory isn’t as fixed as we think. That concept—how memory can change—was a game changer for me. I knew right away, I wanted to do research like that too.
Today, I focus on three main areas: false memories, eyewitness identification, and the ability of people to spot and report missing or wanted persons. Essentially, I apply cognitive psychology to improve the legal system, using what we know about memory and human perception to help address real-world issues.
Q: How long have you been at the University of Arkansas and why did you come here?
A: I joined the University of Arkansas as an assistant professor in 1998, right after finishing my Ph.D. in cognitive psychology at Northwestern and completing a post-doc at SUNY Binghamton. When I was on the job market, I had a few offers, but when I visited Arkansas, I immediately felt a connection. There were three big things that sold me on this department.
First, was the place. Fayetteville is an amazing college town with a vibrant arts scene, great restaurants, and public spaces. Lots to do. At the same time, all you need to do is drive 30-45 minutes and you can be in the middle of some of the most beautiful wilderness in the country. It’s awesome. I just love it.
Second, the people in this department are incredible. The faculty are world-class scholars, but what stands out to me is the genuine collegiality. No one has a big head. Everyone is supportive, humble, and truly invested in one another’s success. It feels like a family here, and that’s rare. And they care about the students. Everybody wants every student to succeed.
Lastly, Arkansas felt like a place where I could do the kind of impactful research I wanted to. All these years later, those reasons still hold true. This is a special place.
Q: After being here for a quarter of a century, you ended up stepping into the role of Department Chair. Why did you decide to do that?
A: I don’t know if this happens to everyone, but for me, there was a point in my life where, you know, I had gotten older, and I had the feeling that it was time for me to give back to a community who had given so much to me.
A while back, somebody asked me that question, and I immediately thought of a story my dad told me about my granddad. I never met my granddad, because he passed away before I was born. But my dad would tell me stories about him. Both my grandfather and grandmother were immigrants from Finland. They came to the United States in the early 1900’s and they ended up in Waukegan, which had a large Finnish immigrant community. They lived in a small wooden home. Chicago winters are cold, really cold! And the only source of heat that the house had at the time was a wood-burning stove. My grandfather had gotten older and he was near the end of his life – and he knew he was near the end of his life. Winter was coming and he didn’t think he would live much longer. So, every day that Fall, he went out, as tired as he was, and as sick as he was, and he cut wood. By hand, with an axe. And he would split the wood. And he would haul the wood down to the basement. And then he stacked it all into neat piles. I remember my dad telling me, “By the time he was done, that whole basement was filled with firewood, Jim. There wasn’t even room to move.” He was sick, he was old, and he was tired. But he knew he wasn’t always going to be there. And winter was coming, and he didn’t want my grandmother to get cold.
I think about that story a lot. I am not thinking of going anywhere soon, and I’m not sick, and not near the end of my life. But I do have a sense that I want to help build something lasting for this department that has done so much for me, and for the people at the university and in Northwest Arkansas. There is a mental health crisis in the U.S. right now and Arkansas is hard hit. You talk to anybody, and it’s something that either they are dealing with, or someone in their family is dealing with, or a friend is dealing with. We are seeing record levels of depression, suicide, anxiety disorder, and all the human suffering that comes along with these problems. My grandfather was worried about winter coming, but when it comes to mental health in the U.S., winter is here. We as a department have the skill, ability and desire to do something to make a difference. We just need the resources to do so.
There is so much more work we have to do too. The research coming out of this department is amazing and important. We are at the cutting edge on topics like understanding depression, understanding how stress affects cognition, how children understand the world, language comprehension, substance abuse disorders, and many other topics. We are developing a detailed plan to help faculty and students conduct even more groundbreaking research like this.
And we are also knocking it out of the park in the classroom. Students routinely rate the quality of undergraduate education they get from our department as first class. We have faculty who are passionate about helping students to achieve their goals, gain critical thinking skills and learn important information about mind, brain and behavior, and apply that knowledge to real world problems.
Q: What kind of goals do you have for the department in the next few years?
A: There are a bunch of initiatives we are working on. We are working to hire new faculty and increasing the number of graduate students. We are committed the Chancellor’s goal of an 80% graduation rate. We are working to expand the service and reach of our psychological clinic. And we have a major initiative to strengthen the impact of our research. Definitely keeping us busy!
Q: When not doing department chair or research or teaching stuff, what do you do for fun?
A: Well, I just love hanging out with my wife Jamie and our dog Maverick. We love hiking. We have an ambition of seeing every waterfall in the State of Arkansas. We are up to about 40 that we’ve seen. I am also an absolute baseball fanatic. I am a Chicago White Sox fan (although let’s not dwell on last season) and, of course, a Razorback baseball fan. I am also a fanatic about Bob Dylan. Love his music.