Michael D. Matthews, Ph.D., is Professor of Engineering Psychology at the United States Military Academy. He has been a military psychologist since 1980. In the past 40 years, he has served on active duty as an Air Force officer (as a behavioral sciences officer), as a psychology professor at Drury University, as a research psychologist for the Army Research Institute, and, since 2000, in his current capacity at West Point.

Richard M. Lerner, Ph.D., is the Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science and the Director of the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts University. He went from kindergarten through Ph.D. within the New York City public schools, completing his doctorate at the City University of New York in 1971 in developmental psychology. Lerner has more than 800 scholarly publications, including more than 80 authored or edited books.