A collection of black and white photographs lie scattered on a table in front of David Shapiro in his UCLA psychophysiology lab.
He picks up a picture, yellowing with age, of a young man grinning broadly and wearing a crisply pressed military uniform.
It is a snapshot of himself stationed in France about 70 years ago, serving as a soldier during the aftermath of World War II.
Shapiro, a World War II veteran and UCLA professor emeritus in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, has spent his life traveling the world—first as a soldier, then as a scholar.
In his 89 years, Shapiro has conducted research and lectured in several countries including Malaysia, Yugoslavia and Japan about psychophysiology and health psychology.
“When I was a kid in the Army, I had no idea what I wanted or what was going to happen to me,” Shapiro said. “My life has just been a series of recognizing opportunities and going after them without hesitation.”
A time of war
Shapiro considers himself lucky.
When he arrived on the shores of France as a soldier on May 8, 1945in the midst of World War II, he thought his time in a war zone was just beginning.
Coincidentally, it was the same day the Nazis surrendered, Shapiro said.
The event occurred two years after he enlisted in the Army when he was 18 years old –a common action among young men of the day, he said.
“Back then, it was good to volunteer. We all did it because we agreed with the rationale against Nazi Germany,” Shapiro said.
He said he was soon assigned to attend a separate military school in South Dakota that focused on radio mechanics and Morse code.
“I had a knack (for) it because it’s an organized and mechanical system and my brain works that way. I’m pretty sure I can still remember all the letters,” Shapiro said, using his fingers to tap out letters on the surface of the desk.
He stayed on as a Morse code instructor before volunteering to go to Officer Candidate School to become an infantry officer.
“I think I was rejected because I was too short. I wasn’t intimidating looking enough or something,” Shapiro said, laughing.
Instead, he went to school for military intelligence where said he remembers going on long hikes using maps without landmark names to sharpen the trainees’ sense of direction.
Since he was able to speak French, Shapiro was assigned to act as a liaison between the French and the U.S. military in France.
He was boarded on a troop ship and arrived in France on Victory in Europe Day – the day of the unconditional surrender of the Nazi army.
“I remember feeling relieved once I heard the news, but things were still so uncertain,” he said.
After getting off the ship, the soldiers marched through the streets of Normandy greeted by French citizens who had left their houses to applaud them.
As soon as he arrived, he boarded a train to Paris to wait until it was his turn to return home.
Although he didn’t have the chance to use the skills he learned during training, Shapiro said he doesn’t think it was a waste of time.
“It was a chance for me to grow up and see the world,” Shapiro said. “Overall, it was a good environment where I was surrounded by so many educated people.”
Path to academia
Even before the war, Shapiro said he always had an inclination toward psychology. He loved observing people and the human condition.
“Even though my father wanted me to be a doctor or a dentist because (they) made more money, I always found myself observing,” Shapiro said. “I like watching how people walk and talk because it says a lot about them.”
Shapiro said since he considered himself a skeptic and thinker, his interest in the subject continued when he learned more about the precise scientific method of psychology.
During his year-long deployment in Europe, he heard that the Army recruited professors from the U.S. to teach college courses to soldiers in France while they waited to return home.
Shapiro said he jumped at the opportunity to take his first psychology classes, a decision that influenced his decision to become a researcher.
He was discharged from the Army in 1946 and eventually received a job as a researcher at Harvard University where he began research in biofeedback, a technique in which people become more aware of how their body reacts to certain stimuli.
The technique is widely used for disorders like hypertension and anxiety because once a patient becomes more aware of their body’s physiological responses, they are better able to take the steps to control it, Shapiro said.
He said he coincidentally began biofeedback research in the 1970s during the Vietnam War.
People would jokingly ask him how to mentally increase their blood pressure to fail their physical to avoid the draft, he said.
“He is considered an international leader in biofeedback research because many of the people in the field have been influenced by him and have had a relationship with him from years ago,” said Bruce Naliboff, a UCLA professor in psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences.
Shapiro eventually moved to UCLA in 1974 and has since collaborated with researchers from across the university, country and world.
For instance, he conducted research in Japan about how people process emotions in different cultures and has done a study at UCLA about the benefits of yoga poses on the body.
Cristina Ottaviani, an Italian researcher from the Sapienza University of Rome, has been collaborating with Shapiro for about eight years.
Ottaviani is currently working with Shapiro on a study about the effect that rumination has on the body.
She said she did not want to miss the opportunity to work with him because she knew about his reputation as one of the best researchers in mind-body interactions.
Shapiro said his curiosity about cultures, language and human behavior is the motivation for his constant travels.
Naliboff said Shapiro has been an example of how to approach studies from perspectives beyond just a Western point of view because he has an open mind about other cultures when conducting research.
Shapiro said he wants to continue interacting with students on campus because he likes listening to their new ideas and hearing about their career goals.
In his office, Shapiro gazes across his desk at the imagesof his smooth-faced, younger self and smiles fondly, trying to remember exactly what he was doing at those specific moments in time.
“Take it from me, there are times in my life where I was worried about how things were going to work out,” Shapiro said. “A lot of finding your place in the world is finding what you like and going after it. Things will just happen to fall into place.”