Michael T. Turvey
University of Connecticut
This is my favorite Bill Estes remembrance, granted the inevitable embellishments that follow from three decades of retelling.
It was Mid-Summer’s Day in Uppsala, Sweden in 1977. A number of leading scholars of memory were in Uppsala for the conference on Perspectives in Memory Research organized by Lars-Goren Nielson in honor of Uppsala University’s 500th Anniversary.
Our Swedish hosts organized an evening affair in the spirit of the national holiday. It was held at a lake. There was much food and drink, and a goodly number of graduate students from the university enjoying themselves along with the conference speakers. At some point, the Mid-Summer’s Day tradition of diving into chilly Swedish lakes in the nude was introduced to the gathered memory celebrities. As one would expect, there was some hesitancy on their part —however, the hesitancy gradually turned to courage and bravado as the evening progressed. A few of us de-clothed and dived in.
From within the gathered leading lights in memory research (Tulving, Craik, Mandler, Murdock, Baddeley, Shallice, Allport, Norman, Kintsch) there arose the question of “What would it take to get Bill to dive in?” Verbal encouragements given to Bill were (not surprisingly) without effect. Bill was, as always, taciturn. Standing, arms folded, he watched the pagan ritual in his blue serge suit, thin blue tie, white button-down shirt, saying nothing. George Mandler’s promise of “I’ll jump in if you do” only brought a grimace.
So the verbal encouragement turned to offers of money. It began small, with individual offers of $50, $250, and $500. At some point the individuals realized they might be more successful if they combined their resources. The money offered to Bill to “go naked and dive in” reached $5,000. I can still hear someone yelling (I think it was Endel) “Five thousand Bill, five thousand!” At this point Bill realized he had done enough anthropology for the evening and with a mien suggesting satisfaction with the inanity he had inspired, he went in search of a more mature beverage and a more mature crowd. He had yet to speak a word.www.psychspace.com心理学空间网
