 In 1998, McCarty was named Executive Director for Science at the American Psychological Association in Washington, D.C., where he helped the APA launch the "Decade of Behavior".The Decade of Behavior, a nickname for the 2000s and successor to the 1990s' "Decade of the Brain", was a public education campaign—endorsed by more than 70 professional associations across a variety of disciplines—to bring attention to the importance of behavioral and social science research.McCarty also spent time visiting universities and regional psychological associations to discuss how the APA might better represent psychologists nationally.