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 Nominations are now open for the SPSP Media Book Prize! The Media Book Prize honors books written by psychologists for the public about the science of social and personality psychology. Last year's winner was Jamie Pennebaker, author of The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us. The submission deadline is May 15.
The 2013 Book Prize will be presented at the SPSP annual conference in Austin, TX, February 13-15, 2014.
 Even in the face of a disaster, we remain optimistic about our chances of injury compared to others, according to a new study. Residents of a town struck by a tornado thought their risk of injury from a future tornado was lower than that of peers, both a month and a year after the destructive twister, as reported today in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Such optimism could undermine efforts toward emergency preparedness.
After an F-2 tornado struck his town in Iowa, Jerry Suls, a psychologist at the University of Iowa who studies social comparison, turned his attention to risk perception. "I had dinner as a guest in a home that was destroyed by the tornado the next evening,” he recalls. "It was hard not to think about future weather disasters while helping with the clean-up in the following weeks.” Read the full press release.
 In
time for Valentine's Day, Personality
and Social Psychology Bulletin
is featuring several new studies all about relationships –
including the link between income in marriage and health, the role of
jealousy in becoming a parent, and how humor affects romantic couples
in conflict. Read this month's tipsheet for journalists.
And read A Love Letter for Public Outreach, about why scientists should talk to the media, a follow-up to the recent media training seminar at SPSP 2013.
 At a special open meeting at SPSP 2013 in New Orleans, members voiced their thoughts to the SPSP leadership about a number of issues that have arisen for the field and the Society over the past year – from cases of fraud within social psychology and the ongoing discussion about replicability, to new infrastructure changes and education and outreach opportunities. Read a summary of that meeting.
 When we typically think of kids who are the victims of school bullying, what comes to mind are isolated youth who do not fit in. A new study, however, shows that when that harassment occurs online, the victims tend to be in mainstream social groups – and they are often friends or former friends, not strangers.The research is part of a burgeoning field of study into the effects of social media on everyday relationships and behavior.
Personality and social psychologists are finding surprising ways in which people's online environments and relationships reflect and influence their real-world ones, as presented today at SPSP annual meeting in New Orleans. Read the full press release.
 We all know that getting a good night's sleep is good for our general health and well-being. But new research is highlighting a more surprising benefit of good sleep: more feelings of gratitude for relationships. It is one of several studies on the benefits of gratitude and giving being presented this week at the SPSP meeting in New Orleans.
Social psychologists are increasingly finding that "prosocial” behavior – including expressing gratitude and giving to others – is key to our psychological well-being. Even how we choose to spend our money on purchases affects our health and happiness. And children develop specific ways to help others from a very young age. Read the full press release.
 When
mom is the boss at home, she may have a harder time being the boss at
work. New research suggests that women, but not men, become less
interested in pursuing workplace power when they view that they are
in control of decision-making in the home. This shift in thinking
affects career choices without women even being aware.
"Women
don’t know that they are backing off from workplace power because
of how they are thinking about their role at home,” says Melissa
Williams of Emory University. "As a result, women may make
decisions such as not going after a high-status promotion at work, or
not seeking to work full time, without realizing why,” explains
Williams who will be presenting her findings today at the SPSP annual meeting in New
Orleans.
Her
new study is one of several at the SPSP meeting that will explore a
continued gender gap in workplace power – from how women versus men
view their roles in the home to how gender stereotypes form at a
young age to how these attitudes affect women's likelihood of
pursuing careers in science and math. Read the full press release.
 Extraversion does not just explain differences between how people act at social events. How extraverted you are may influence how the brain makes choices – specifically whether you choose an immediate or delayed reward, according to a new study. The work is part of a growing body of research on the vital role of understanding personality in society.
"Understanding how people differ from each other and how that affects various outcomes is something that we all do on an intuitive basis, but personality psychology attempts to bring scientific rigor to this process,” says Colin DeYoung of the University of Minnesota. "Personality affects academic and job performance, social and political attitudes, the quality and stability of social relationships, physical health and mortality, and risk for mental disorder.” DeYoung is one of several researchers presenting new work in a special session today about personality psychology at the SPSP meeting in New Orleans. Read the full press release.
 Keep up-to-date with the latest news from SPSP 2013 in New Orleans (Jan. 17-19)! Check out the SPSP 2013 Press Room, complete with press releases, tipsheet for journalists, and Twitter feed (@SPSPnews, #SPSP2013). And check back often for updates and the latest coverage of the meeting in the news.
 The mobile app for the SPSP 2013 meeting in New Orleans (Jan. 17-19, 2013) is now available! Download it for Apple, Android, and Blackberry mobile devices. A brief tutorial is available.
The full meeting schedule and symposium abstracts are also available online. More than 3,200 people are now registered for the meeting. Check out who's coming. Follow us on Twitter: @SPSPNews @SPSPmtg #SPSP2013
 Details for the SPSP 2013 press briefings in New Orleans are now available. Registered members of the press will have access to a press room with Wi-Fi and the following exclusive press briefings: How Stereotypes Shape Women's Identities and Careers; Giving, Getting, and Gratitude; and Bullying, Relationships, and Personality: How the Social Media World Maps to Social Reality. Get more information, including press briefing speakers and related meeting sessions, in the latest Media Advisory.
An important note is now available from the SPSP President about an SPSP-initiated investigation. We will post more updates as further information becomes available. (October 10)
NEW December 10: Update on the Investigation
 Being a good partner
may make you a better parent, according to a new study. The same set
of skills that we tap to be caring toward our partners is what we use
to nurture our children, researchers found.
The study sought to examine how
caregiving plays out in families – "how one relationship affects
another relationship,” says Abigail Millings of the University of
Bristol, lead author of the work published online this week in
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. "We wanted to
see how romantic relationships between parents might be associated
with what kind of parents they are.” Read the full press release.
 A growing body of research highlights the importance of gratitude for both social and personal well-being. SPSP will have a session on gratitude at the SPSP annual meeting in New Orleans, with a related press conference. Read about this and new research in our journals on the link between group victimhood and trust, how weight stigma affects health, and more, in this month's tipsheet for journalists.
 SPSP invites members of the press to
attend its annual
meeting
January 17-19, 2013, in New Orleans. Registered members of the press will have access to a press
room with Wi-Fi and the following exclusive press briefings: How
Stereotypes Shape Women's Identities and Careers; Giving, Getting,
and Gratitude; and Bullying, Relationships, and Personality: How the
Social Media World Maps to Social Reality. More details are available
in the latest Media Advisory.
 From storm psychology to politics to
the neuroscience of choking, read some of the latest stories in the
news from personality and social psychologists: fear of math induces pain in brain; a
silver lining for Sandy; talking
politics over Thanksgiving; feeling
blue post-election.
Psychologists also have been
increasingly talking
and writing about replication in
the field, with several SPSP members weighing in on the topic in
the latest
Perspectives on Psychological Science. We will have a
symposium on openness in data (Jan. 18 at 11:15 a.m.) at the SPSP
annual meeting in New Orleans, Jan. 17-19, 2013.
Follow
SPSP on Twitter
and Facebook
for regular updates.
 With the U.S. presidential election
just days away, tax policy is on the minds of many Americans. While
President Obama and Governor Romney offer different approaches to
taxation, the debate has not really asked the question of how taxes
affect their citizens' happiness. Shige Oishi of the University of
Virginia weighs in on this question on the PSP Connections blog – citing
recent research that found that residents of countries with the most
progressive taxation were happier than residents of those countries with less progressive tax policies.
 Registration for the 2013 SPSP Annual
Meeting in New Orleans is now open! Join us in the Big Easy, January
17-19, 2013, for a science-packed meeting that will include 90
symposia, more than 24 pre-conferences, 7 poster sessions, and the popular data blitz!
The conference will include the the latest scientific research on a
diverse  array of topics – secrets and privacy online, stereotypes
and prejudice, morality, status and power, happiness, openness in
data, free will, relationships and more. Press can register now as
well, and will have access to a press room and exclusive press
briefings. www.spspmeeting.org
 Politics have been in the limelight, with personality and social psychologists weighing in on everything from America's moral divide and subliminal influences on voting preferences to the relationship between a politician's appearance and affiliation and political metaphors that have become tangible.
Follow SPSP on Twitter and Facebook for regular updates.
 People often remark that people of a different race "all look alike.” However, when we have trouble recognizing people from another race, it may actually have little to do with the other person's race. Instead, new research finds that that we can improve our memory of members of another race by identifying ourselves as part of the same group -- whether a sports team or nationality. Such identification could improve everything from race relations to eyewitness identification, says Jay Van Bavel of New York University, co-author of the new study published online last month in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Read the full press release.
 Students’ gender affects how they are perceived and treated by science faculty members, according to a new study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. When presented with identical applicants who differed only by their gender, science faculty members evaluated the male student as superior, were more likely to hire him, paid him more money, and offered him more career mentoring, researchers found. Corinne Moss-Racusin of Yale University, lead author of the study, discusses these latest findings and offers tips for reducing gender bias within academia in the latest PSP Connections blog.
Your home city matters for both who you are and how you feel, according to a new suite of studies. In seven studies, researchers examined the history and culture of San Francisco and Boston, as well as surveyed residents (including commuters, college students, and middle-aged residents) of each city. They found that San Francisco showed more emphasis on egalitarianism, innovation, and looser social norms, while Boston emphasizes tradition, community, and tighter social norms. As a result, for Bostonians, feeling good is more contingent on social factors such as education, finances and community, as published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Read about more new research from our journals, including how a mouth rinse can refuel willpower, in this month's tipsheet.
 The winners of this year's Student Publication Awards each tackle
a societally important issue using sophisticated theorizing and
multiple studies with triangulating methods. The winners are:
Christine Ma-Kellams, for the paper "I Am Against Us? Unpacking
Cultural Differences in Ingroup Favoritism via Dialecticism” in
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB); Lisa L.
Shu, for the paper "Dishonest Deed, Clear Conscience: When Cheating
Leads to Moral Disengagement and Motivated Forgetting” in PSPB,
and Laura G. Babbitt for the paper "Framing Matters: Contextual Influences
on Interracial Interaction Outcomes" in PSPB. All papers were
published in 2011 to be eligible for the 2012 award. More information
is available here.
 Personal
myths, aversive racism, heat and retaliation in baseball, and the
power of writing about personal trauma – these are just a few of
the research areas of the winners of the 2012 annual awards from the
Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). Each of the
recipients has made a unique and significant contribution to
understanding the individual and social factors shaping people's
personalities, interactions, and behaviors. Read the full press release.
 From why people stay behind in storms and personality
and behavioral differences between conservatives and liberals to the
moral decline in the words we use and Todd
Akin and cognitive dissonance, social and personality
psychologists continue to be featured in the news.
And
in our journals – from how self-compassion
helps people to view failure as a challenge to how
negative
contact predicts prejudice and more.
Follow
SPSP on Twitter and
Facebook for
regular updates.
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