Reflections on service to CPA.

AbstractThe rewards for service to a professional association are many: reputation-building, power, and influence; skill development; networking opportunities; feelings of mastery and belonging. These serve to maintain the behaviours despite occasional dull or routine tasks required in the service role. Voluntary service of this kind is essential to the maintenance of psychological research, practice, and education; arguably it ensures that psychologists can continue to be psychologists. Disciplinary service ensures a strong common core of knowledge, language, and culture to support interdisciplinary and interprofessional endeavours.Keywords: professional development, volunteer, service, discipline, psychologyService (n.) 19.a. The action of serving, helping, or benefiting; conduct tending to the welfare or advantage of another (Oxford English Dictionary, 2012)It began with a reaction; I could not resist speaking out. Early in my career I read a column in Psynopsis by the then-chair of the CPA Scientific Affairs committee, Linda Siegel. I do not recall the topic now, but at the time it struck a chord and I wrote her a letter. She responded by inviting me to serve on the committee - in effect, to act rather than merely to react, and to take responsibility for the welfare of psychology as a discipline. Thus began my service to CPA.Since then I have had the privilege to serve psychology and CPA in many capacities, among them most memorably a term on the Board of Directors during the period when this award's namesake, John C. Service, was Executive Director. His commitment to our discipline, his tenaciousness to the ideal of "Advancing Psychology for AH" was and is formidable. The naming of this award for him, with its gentle pun, is most appropriate.Since receiving the unexpected news that I was to receive the CPA John C. Service Member of the Year award, I have thought about the nature of disciplinary service (that is service to the organisational structures of a discipline), its benefits to the one who serves and to the object served, and the place for professional disciplines in the era of interdisciplinari ty. Interestingly, I found few relevant empirical investigations of any kind on these subjects against which to evaluate the hypotheses or notions that I have formed.1 Thus, what follows is a series of reflections on service that I hope will spark reaction from readers that might lead them into a life of service to our shared discipline, psychology.Why Service?The dictionary definition of "service" with which I opened this essay suggests altruism as a motive for service - the service action confers a benefit to the served at a cost to the servant. Psychologists have, of course, puzzled over the phenomenon of altruism for decades: Why do people give of themselves, when it would be easier not to? In the case of disciplinary service, surely there must be some reward for the time that we spend in committee rooms, reading e-mails, and the countless other really quite dull tasks required to keep the discipline and its organisational manifestations active.One possible explanation comes from evolutionary biology, where the behaviours of one in a disciplinary service role would be characterised as indirect reciprocity (Nowak & Sigmund, 2005): "I scratch your back, and someone else will scratch mine." In this conceptualisation, acts of indirect reciprocity build reputation, which in turn increases the likelihood that someone who has either observed my altruistic act, or has heard of my reputation, will be likely to help me in tum (Nowak & Sigmund, 2005). Some have argued that indirect reciprocity means that one who does good is showing off - acting, at least in part, in hopes of building reputation (Iredale & van Vugt, 2012). Reputation, in turn, can bring its own rewards, including power and influence, connections to potentially helpful others, and employment opportunities. …