Recipients receive a plaque at the Awards Ceremony held at the SPSP Annual Convention, as well as a complimentary one-year SPSP membership. Multiple student authors of the same publication will share the award prize.

Requirements

• Eligible papers must have been published in PSPR, PSPB or SPPS during the calendar year prior to nomination. For example, to be considered in 2022, the publication must have been printed in the calendar year 2021. Papers and chapters still "in press" are not eligible.

All student first-authored papers that have been accepted for publication in SPSP journals are automatically eligible for this award. There is not an open call for nominations. To be considered, during the manuscript submission process, you must indicate that the first author of the paper is a student. All manuscripts that have indicated this will be reviewed, there is no application process.

2022

• Mohammad Atari, Harvard University
• Alexander Garinther, Second Sight Training Systems
• Magdalena Heynicke, Technical University Dresden
• Katherine Lawson, University of California, Davis
• Charlotte Moser, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Grace Rivera, University of Mississippi
• David Silverman, Northwestern University
• Mattea Sim, Indiana University, Bloomington
• Yidan Yin, University of Southern California
• Hila Zitelny, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

2021

Aimee L. Belanger, Putting belonging in context: Communal affordances signal belonging in STEM

Nicholas Buttrick, Historical change in the moral foundations of political persuasion

Lusine Grigoryan and Xuechunzi Bai, Stereotypes as historical accidents: Images of social class in postcommunist versus capitalist societies

Siwar Hasan-Aslih, The quest for hope: Disadvantaged group members can fulfill their desire to feel hope, but only when they believe in their power

Chloe O. Huelsnitz, Accuracy in perceptions of fundamental social motives: Comparisons to perceptions of Big Five traits and associations with friendship quality

William McAuliffe, Is empathy the default response to suffering? A meta-analytic evaluation of perspective taking’s effect on empathic concern

Sanaz Talaifar and Ashwini Ashokkumar, A new pathway to university retention? Identity fusion with university predicts retention independently of grades

2020

Pelin Gul, Benevolent Sexism and Mate Preferences: Why Do Women Prefer Benevolent Men Despite Recognizing That They Can Be Undermining?

Sarah Humberg,  Response Surface Analysis in Personality and Social Psychology: Checklist and Clarifications for the Case of Congruence Hypotheses

Angie LeRoy, Implications for Reward Processing in Differential Responses to Loss: Impacts on Attachment Hierarchy Reorganization

Amanda Ravary, Shaping the Body Politic: Mass Media Fat-Shaming Affects Implicit Anti-Fat Attitudes

Xian Zhao, Your Name Is Your Lifesaver: Anglicization of Names and Moral Dilemmas in a Trilogy of Transportation Accidents

2019

Mona Ayoub, The relations between parental socioeconomic status, personality, and life outcomes

Kimberly E. Chaney, The endurance of interpersonal confrontations as a prejudice reduction strategy

Boaz Hameiri, Paradoxical thinking as a conflict-resolution intervention: Comparison to alternative interventions and examination of psychological mechanisms

Nicholas M. Hobson, The psychology of rituals: An integrative review and process-based framework

2018

Frederick Clavel, United and Divided by Stress: How Stressors Differentially Influence Social Support in African American Couples Over Time

Bruce Doré, Helping Others Regulate Emotion Predicts Increased Regulation of One’s Own Emotions and Decreased Symptoms of Depression

David S. March, In Harm’s Way: On Preferential Response to Threatening Stimuli

Amit Goldenberg & Kinneret Endevelt, Making Intergroup Contact More Fruitful: Enhancing Cooperation Between Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli Adolescents by Fostering Beliefs About Group Malleability

Feng Bai, Beyond Dominance and Competence: A Moral Virtue Theory of Status Attainment

2017

Priyanka D. Joshi, Communicating with distant others: the functional use of abstraction

Gabrielle Filip-Crawford, Homosexuality and pro-gay ideology as pathogens? Implications of a disease-spread lay model for understanding anti-gay behaviors

Matthew D. Rocklage, On the Dominance of Attitude Emotionality

Andrew H. Hales, Disagreeableness as a Cause and Consequence of Ostracism

2016

Laura Van Berkel, Hierarchy, dominance, and deliberation: Egalitarian values require mental effort

Jonas R. Kunst, "We Are in This Together” Common Group Identity Predicts Majority Members’ Active Acculturation Efforts to Integrate Immigrants

Kun Zhao, The role of interpersonal traits in social decision making: Exploring sources of behavioral heterogeneity in economic games

James R. Rae, Exposure to racial out-groups and implicit race bias in the United States

2015

Samantha J. Heintzelman, (The Feeling of) Meaning-as-Information

Bo M. Winegard, Grief functions as an honest indicator of commitment

Jiyin Cao, Does travel broaden the mind? Breadth of foreign experiences increases generalized trust

Alyssa Fu, My mother and me: Why tiger mothers motivate Asian Americans but not European Americans

2014

Samantha Joel, The Things you do for me: Perceptions of a romantic partner’s investments promote gratitude and commitment

Kyle G. Ratner, Perceived stigmatization, ingroup pride, and immune and endocrine activity: Evidence from a community sample of Black and Latina women

Xiaowen Xu, Does cultural exposure partially explain the association between personality and political orientation?

For more information, please contact [email protected]

The Outstanding Research Award recognizes rigorous and transparent research by graduate students. Empirical submissions will be evaluated for the quality of the research design, transparency of the reported results, and legitimacy of the statistical conclusions. The goal of this award is to highlight outstanding empirical research regardless of the statistical significance of the results.

Submissions will be reviewed by student peers and/or faculty members. Five students will be chosen for the award and will receive a $100 honorarium. As an additional honor, all recipients will be offered the opportunity to meet virtually or in person at the convention with a mentor of their choice. All graduate students, whether pursuing dissertation or pre-dissertation research, are welcome to submit an application.

Selection Process

There will be one round of judging for this award. Five winners will be chosen by a group of reviewers based on the merits of the entire application. Reviewers will be matched to appropriate applications based on keyword matches and field of work. Applications will be mask-reviewed based on the judging rubric.

Eligibility

Applicants must be student members of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology at the time they apply for the award.

Applicants must be full-time graduate students at the time of submission.

Published data is eligible for the award if the applicant was involved in the research project.

Data collection and analyses must be complete.

Applicants are eligible to enter ONE first-author submission to the award. If more than one submission is entered, they will all be voided.

Please note: The ORA no longer requires applicants to physically attend the conference or have an accepted submission at SPSP.  Past winners of the Student Poster Award and Student Travel Award/Registration Stipends are eligible for this award. Past winners of the Outstanding Research Award are not eligible.

Applications should include a brief abstract and a detailed project summary, both of which should be MASKED (should not include any identifying information, such as names and affiliations):

• An abstract of 400 words or fewer summarizing the research. There is no minimum word limit for abstracts; however, we believe that abstracts that adequately describe the details of the research require at least 300 words.
• A project summary limited to three pages. The summary should include the purpose of the research, a brief introduction, a detailed methods section, a detailed results section, and a discussion/implications section.
• The introduction must include a clear, concise, and completely justified statement of the hypotheses tested (if applicable) or the research questions.
• The method and results sections must include detailed and transparent reports of the study’s design, procedures, analyses, and findings.
• The discussion/implications should discuss the significant contribution of the work while taking into account the potential limitations of the study.
• The summary can include up to two tables or figures (i.e., one table/one figure, two tables, or two figures) that are not counted toward the three-page limit. References also do not count towards the three-page limit.
• The summary must adhere to APA 7th edition format (i.e., 1-inch margins, 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced).

Please view the judging rubric for the Outstanding Research Award before you make your submission. This rubric will be used to score your application.

Preparing Your Files for Masked Review

Please name your application file “ORAprojectsummary”. Remove all identifying information (e.g., names, affiliations) from your abstract, application, AND file names before uploading your submission.

If you have any questions, please e-mail us at [email protected]

Applications Closed

2022

Eliana Polimeni, The Easier-Is-Better Heuristic: The False Allure of Easy Work

H. Annie Vu, Making America Great by Undermining Its History: The Role of Racial Collective Narcissism in White Americans’ Reactions to History of Racism and Critical Race Theory

Joseph Siev, Personal misconduct elicits harsher professional consequences for artists (vs. scientists): A moral decoupling process

Melanie Fessinger, From Whose Perspective? Differences between Actors and Observers in Determining the Voluntariness of Guilty Pleas

Nadia Adelina, The Stories We Share and the Support We Receive: Examining the Reception of Support-Seeking Narratives Online

2021

Yalda Daryani, Faustian Bargain: Investigating the role of monetary value amount in moral judgment and decision difficulty using taboo trade-off narratives

Eleni Kremeti, Distinguishing preferences for group-based inequality for different types of social hierarchies

Jordan Wylie, Exploring the motivated enforcement of frequently violated codified rules

Jeewon Oh, Happiness Singled Out: Bidirectional Associations Between Singlehood and Life Satisfaction

Hannah Waldfogel, Ideology selectively shapes attention to inequality

2020

Andres Montealegre Moreno, Does Maximizing Good Make People Look Bad?

Eugene Ofosu, A Tripartite Factor Structure Underlies Regional Intergroup Prejudice

Yoobin Park, Singles’ Sexual Satisfaction is Associated With More Satisfaction With Singlehood and Less Interest in Marriage

Cristina Salvador, Relational mobility predicts a faster spread of COVID-19: A 39-country study

Sze Yuh Nina Wang, Moral Language Use by U.S. Political Elites

2019

Zachariah Berry, When Less Is Enough: The Relationship Between Prosocial Effort and Moral Character Judgments

Tobias Ebert, Religious People Only Live Longer in Religious Cultural Contexts: A Gravestone Analysis

Juliana French, Change of Heart: The Implications of Changing Hormonal Contraceptive Use After Relationship Formation

Oriane Georgeac, Instrumentality Undermines Underrepresented Group Members' Psychological Sense of Belonging and Attraction to Organizations

Ahra Ko, Family Matters: Rethinking the Psychology of Human Social Motivation

2018

Emily Lasko

Angelica Leigh

Heather M. Maranges 

Michael S. Rosenblum 

Samantha Krauss

2017

Laura Wallace 

David March 

Jae Yun Kim 

Paige Lloyd 

David Newman

2016

Courtney Walsh

Gregg Sparkman

Jennifer Dannals

Zoë Francis

Kassandra Cortes

For questions regarding this award, contact the Student Committee at [email protected].