Allan W. Wicker received an associates degree from Independence Community College in Kansas in 1961. He received the rest of his degrees from the University of Kansas, including a bachelors in personnel administration in 1963, masters in psychology in 1965, and doctorate in psychology in 1967. He studied under Roger G. Barker, who had come to the University of Kansas to serve as chairman of the psychology department in 1947. Barker established the Midwest Psychological Field Station in Oskaloosa, Kansas and lived in Oskaloosa for much of the rest of his life.

Wicker went on to serve as an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee from 1967-1969 and than at the University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana from 1969-1971. In 1971, he joined the faculty at the Claremont Graduate School, serving as acting chairman of the Psychology Department from 1985-1986. He has held visiting professorships at the New York State School of Labor and Industrial Relations, part of Cornell University, and at the Psychological Institute at the University of Tuebingen in Germany. He has also held Fulbright appointments as a visiting professor at the University of Zimbabwe-Harare, University of Ghana-Legon, and University of Malaysia-Sarawak. He has been professor emeritus with Claremont Graduate University since 1999.

Wicker's research interests include culture and ethnicity; interpersonal processes; organizational behavior; research methods and assessments; and sociology, particularly social networks. He has taught undergraduate courses in ecological psychology, social psychology of work, non-governmental organization (NGO) administration, qualitative research methods, and organizational behavior and industrial relations. He has taught graduate courses in research conception and design, qualitative resarch methods for education, work and culture, naturalistic inquiry, theories of social behavior, applied conceptual framing and analysis, and qualitative research methods for human resource professionals.

Wicker's publications include the book An Introduction to Ecological Psychology (1979), an online publication about the "Working in Ghana" Project, and several articles and book chapters in psychology journals, conference proceedings, and textbooks.

[Information retrieved from Allan Wicker's CV, dated March 2014.]