SPSP Award Encourages International Collaboration at Annual Convention

The Society for Personality and Social Psychology is committed to ensuring that our science encompasses the full range of human experience. We offer the International Bridge-Building Award as an incubator for testing innovative ideas to help build connections and collaboration around the world.

We invite proposals to create an event associated with SPSP’s annual convention whose goal is to promote communication, exchanges, and partnerships with scholars from countries currently under-represented in SPSP and in mainstream personality and social psychology.

In 2021, the award led to three compelling sessions that tackled pressing issues in personality and social psychology through an international lens:

A non-profit research organization based in Mumbai, India, Monk Prayogshala, organized a discussion that addressed phenomena specific to South East Asia that may not have theories in Western social psychological and personality science. One example covered during the session was the focus of most theories of intergroup behaviors on race. This discussion explored the role of research when countries are largely monolithic, but have other facets of intergroup violence.

The lack of freely available social psychology resources that are adapted to indigenous languages and circumstances was highlighted during a second session. An international group of researchers, representing Kenya, France, and the United States, examined how cutting-edge syllabi on open science can be created to address this challenge in Africa.

Angela Maitner, representing the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, designed a third session to introduce ongoing research and opportunities in the Arab Middle East. This discussion shed light on faculty who work in the region and emic perspectives on psychological processes and future research goals, as well as the challenges of conducting research throughout the region.

We are glad to offer the International Bridge-Building Award once again in 2021 and will be accepting applications until July 20 at 11:59 PM ET. To learn more about the award, click here.