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Suedfeld, Peter

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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences
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Early Life and Educational Background

Suedfeld was born in Budapest, Hungary, on August 30, 1935. He survived the Holocaust as a hidden child with false papers. His parents were imprisoned in different death camps, from which his mother never returned. At the end of 1945, his father and he moved to Vienna, where they spent 3 years waiting for a visa to enter the USA. They lived in New York City, where Suedfeld attended Stuyvesant High School and Queens College of the City University of New York. While at the university, he enrolled in ROTC in preparation for a military career. He interrupted his education to enlist in the US Infantry and served in Ft. Hood, TX, and Clark Air Base, Philippines.

Upon returning to Queens College, he reenrolled in ROTC, but a required course in Experimental Psychology introduced him to the excitement of research and changed his career plans. As originally planned, upon obtaining his BA with honors, he also accepted his commission as a Second Lieutenant in...

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Selected Bibliography

  • Connors, J.B. (2014, June). Peter Suedfeld (1935): Canada’s most versatile psychologist. Presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Psychological Association, Vancouver.

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  • Suedfeld, P. (1990). Restricted environmental stimulation techniques in health enhancement and disease prevention. In K. D. Craig & S. M. Weiss (Eds.), Health enhancement, disease prevention, and early intervention: Biobehavioural perspectives (pp. 206–230). New York: Springer.

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  • Suedfeld, P. (1992). Cognitive managers and their critics. Political Psychology, 13, 435–453.

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  • Suedfeld, P. (1997). Homo invictus: The indomitable species. Canadian Psychology, 38, 164–173.

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  • Suedfeld, P. (2002). Life after the ashes: The postwar pain, and resilience, of child survivors of the Holocaust. Washington, DC: Center for Advanced Holocaust Research, US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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  • Suedfeld, P. (2010a). The cognitive processing of politics and politicians: Archival studies of conceptual and integrative complexity. Journal of Personality, 78, 1669–1702.

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  • Suedfeld, P. (2010b). Historical space psychology: Early terrestrial explorations as Mars analogues. Planetary and Space Science, 58, 639–645.

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  • Suedfeld, P. (2012). Extreme and unusual environments: Challenges and responses. In S. Clayton (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of environmental and conservation psychology (pp. 348–371). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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  • Suedfeld, P. (2014). Political and military geniuses: Psychological profiles and responses to stress. In D. K. Simonton (Ed.), The Wiley handbook of genius (pp. 244–265). New York: Wiley.

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  • Suedfeld, P., & Borrie, R. A. (1999). Health and therapeutic applications of chamber and flotation Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy (REST). Psychology and Health, 14, 545–566.

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  • Suedfeld, P., Tetlock, P. E., & Streufert, S. (1992). Conceptual/integrative complexity. In C. P. Smith (Ed.), Motivation and personality: Handbook of thematic content analysis (pp. 393–400). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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  • Suedfeld, P., Soriano, E., McMurtry, D. L., Paterson, H., Weiszbeck, T. L., & Krell, R. (2005). Erikson’s “Components of a healthy personality” among Holocaust survivors immediately and forty years after the war. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 60(3), 229–248.

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  • Suedfeld, P., Leighton, D. C., & Conway, L. G., III. (2006). Integrative complexity and cognitive management in international confrontations: Research and potential applications. In M. Fitzduff & C. E. Stout (Eds.), The psychology of resolving global conflicts: From war to peace (Nature vs. nurture, Vol. 1, pp. 211–237). New York: Praeger Security International.

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  • Suedfeld, P., Tetlock, P. E., & Jhangiani, R. (2007). The new psychology of alliances. In S. Renshon & P. Suedfeld (Eds.), Understanding the Bush Doctrine: Psychology and strategy in an age of terrorism (pp. 105–128). New York: Routledge.

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  • Suedfeld, P., Legkaia, K., & Brcic, J. (2010). Changes in the hierarchy of value references associated with flying in space. Journal of Personality, 78, 1411–1435.

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  • Tetlock, P.E. (2014). (Guest editor). Symposium: The scoring of integrative complexity. Political Psychology, 35(5).

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  • Wallace, M. D., & Suedfeld, P. (1988). Leadership performance in crisis: The longevity – complexity link. International Studies Quarterly, 32, 439–451.

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Suedfeld, P. (2016). Suedfeld, Peter. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1010-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1010-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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