The Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology (FPSP) was established to provide crucial support for wide-ranging, forward-looking, long-term activities that could enhance the discipline of personality and social psychology.

It focuses on development and fundraising, seeking gifts and donations to fund activities that have the potential to augment and broaden the vigor of the discipline. As a non-profit charitable organization incorporated in the state of New York in 2006, the Foundation is legally separate from related organizations, but it shares the commitment of those organizations to personality and social psychology.

Below is a list of current Foundation projects. Click here to go to the Foundation’s website for more information.

The Foundation aims to establish additional awards to honor those who have made significant contributions to our field. It will also seek to fund an array of fellowships, travel grants, research projects, conferences, and innovative educational programs.

Heritage Initiative. The Heritage Initiative is designed to honor our discipline’s most generous and effective mentors, with an eye toward recognizing and supporting the best research of a new generation entering the field.

In the Heritage Initiative, colleagues and students are asked to raise a benchmark amount in the name of a mentor they would like to honor. The names and pictures of honored mentors are placed on a Wall of Fame at the Foundation’s website, where a biography and testimonials about the honoree can be viewed.

These funds are reserved to begin dissertation research grants for PhD. candidates in a future year.

SAGE Young Scholar Awards. Each year, the SAGE Awards recognize five junior scholars, providing each of them with a $5,000 research grant to support their ongoing scholarship.

Carol and Ed Diener Mid-Career Awards in Personality and Social Psychology. Each year, the Diener Award recognizes two mid-career scholars, based on their research contributions to the field ($2,500 each). One award is given to a social psychologist; one to a social psychologist.

Robert B. Cialdini Award in Field Research. The Cialdini Award ($2,500) annually recognizes the best empirical article applying social psychological theory and methods in a field context.

Caryl Rusbult Early Career Award. The Rusbult Award provides a modest $300 award to a junior scholar for contribution to the study of interpersonal relationships.