Leuphana awards honorary doctorate to Peter Gollwitzer
During this year's dies academicus on 4 July 2018, Leuphana University of Lüneburg handed over an honorary doctorate award from the Faculty of Education to Prof. Dr. Peter Gollwitzer. With this award, the faculty honours the scientist for his outstanding scholarly work in the field of self-regulation research, which has led to a better understanding of human aspirations in the context of education, economy, politics and environment.
The social and motivational psychologist Prof. Dr. Peter Gollwitzer is one of the most important contemporary representatives of self-regulation research. Over the past 40 years, he has significantly influenced psychological self-regulation research and has decisively enriched the field of research with a multitude of new theories and empirical findings. Gollwitzer's most influential theories and models include the theory of symbolic self-supplementation, the Rubicon model and the mind-set theory of action phases, and the theory of intention. His work continues to inspire scientists in the fields of psychology, economics, education and medicine, thus contributing to the continuous development of this field of research.
The person:
Peter Gollwitzer was born in Germany in 1950. He studied at the Universities of Regensburg and Bochum. In 1981 he received his doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin, and in 1988 his professorial degree from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. Gollwitzer was head of the Motivation and Action research group at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research in Munich. In 1993, he became Professor of Social and Motivation Psychology at the University of Constance. Gollwitzer has been Professor of Social Psychology at New York University since 1999. In 2017, he was elected member of the German Leopoldina Academy of Sciences.