Twice a year, SPSP gives members the opportunity to apply for a Small Conference Grant. These grants are offered to gift the opportunity to promote research and innovation in personality and social psychology, and provide support to members for developing and hosting successful conferences. Members may request up to $5,000 for smaller conferences and between $5,000 - $10,000 for larger conferences.

Small Conference Grants are another way SPSP provides opportunities for members of all institution sizes and supports new communities and fosters the development of existing research groups within social and personality psychology. These grants are especially geared towards post-PhD members at institutions that may not provide the same level of resources as larger universities or places of research. The Small Conference Grant program also factors in the promotion of diversity in attendees and speakers for a given conference!

Dr. Amie Gordon (University of California, San Francisco) was awarded a small conference grant in 2019 to convene on bringing sleep-wake processes into personality and social psychology.

“The small conference grant allowed us to bring together a group of researchers from different areas to spend an entire weekend talking about sleep and social processes—something we wouldn't have done without the funding provided by SPSP. By bringing together researchers from different disciplines, we were able to share knowledge, discuss difficulties and best practices in our research, and identify important future directions. I learned so much from hearing my colleagues share their expertise and experiences. The conference allowed us to build a network and many of us have begun to collaborate as a result of the conference. Just applying for the grant was helpful, because it brought a group of social and personality researchers together to share our ideas and vision for the event.”