Outstanding Research Award

Award Info

About the Award

This year's recipients

Andres Montealegre Moreno, Cornell University

Does Maximizing Good Make People Look Bad?

Eugene Ofosu, McGill University

A Tripartite Factor Structure Underlies Regional Intergroup Prejudice

Yoobin Park, University of Toronto

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

Cristina Salvador, University of Michigan

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

Sze Yuh Nina Wang, University of Toronto

Moral Language Use by U.S. Political Elites

About the Award

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 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 reviewed blindly 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 a full-time graduate student 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 nor have an accepted submission at SPSP. Past winners of the Student Poster Award and Student Travel Award are eligible for this award. However, past winners of the Outstanding Research Award are NOT eligible.

How to Apply

Applications should include a brief abstract and a detailed project summary, both of which should be BLIND (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 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.
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 Blind 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 spsp_gsc@spsp.org.

The application portal is now closed.

Past Recipients

2019

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

Tobias Ebert headshot Tobias Ebert, University of Mannheim
Religious People Only Live Longer in Religious Cultural Contexts: A Gravestone Analysis

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

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

Ahra Ko headshot Ahra Ko, Arizona State University
Family Matters: Rethinking the Psychology of Human Social Motivation

2018

Emily Lasko headshot Emily Lasko is a second year student in the Social Psychology doctoral program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research focuses on the psychological and biological factors that influence the development of psychopathy and aggressive behavior, specifically examining mechanisms and predictors of successful variants of psychopathy.

Angelica Leigh headshot Angelica Leigh is a PhD Candidate in the Organizational Behavior program at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Her research explores the dynamic nature of diversity in organizations, including the influence of societal events on individual’s identification, emotions, and behavior and on the interactive effect of race and gender on negotiation outcomes and the perception of emotions.

Heather Maranges headshot Heather M. Maranges is a PhD candidate in social psychology at Florida State University. Her research examines the nature of self-control, moral psychology, and their intersection— the role of self-control in moral decision making and moral perception. She complements traditional social and individual difference methods with those of cognitive psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, and genetics.

Michael Rosenblum headshot Michael S. Rosenblum is a PhD student in the Management of Organizations group at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. His research focuses on understanding facets of political discourse and inequality. In particular, he studies how political language (such as political correctness) impacts judgements of communicators. He is also interested in how race, gender, and class impact impressions.

Samantha Krauss headshot Samantha Krauss is a PhD student in psychology at the University of Bern in Switzerland. She is primarily interested in self-esteem development over the lifespan. Her research seeks to understand factors that shape individual differences in self-esteem (e.g., family environment, work conditions, and work outcomes).

2017

Laura Wallace is a PhD candidate in psychology at Ohio State University. Broadly speaking, her research focuses on the psychology of change. Within this broad theme, she focuses on three major questions: When do people seek growth for themselves and their societies? How and when do people’s attitudes change? When do attitudes lead to action? You can learn more about her here: http://laura-e-wallace.com/

David March headshot David March is a PhD student in social psychology at the University of Tennessee. His research seeks to understand the implicit social cognitive mechanisms guiding how people process information. David has developed a theoretical model, the Dual Implicit Process Model, that explicates a speed and strength difference between the implicit processing of threats to immediate bodily harm versus all other classes of stimuli.

Jae Yun Kim headshot Jae Yun Kim is a PhD candidate in the Management and Organizations program at Duke University. His research primarily examines how popular ideas about self-help and self-improvement (e.g., women's empowerment messages, advice to pursue one's passion, the belief in the power of the mind and thinking) shape perceptions of fairness, inequality, and legitimacy.

E. Paige Lloyd headshot Paige Lloyd was a PhD candidate at Miami University at the time of the award and is now an assistant professor at the University of Denver. She investigates the antecedents and consequences of person perception, with an emphasis on implications for social inequality.

David Newman headshot David Newman is a Ph.D. candidate in social psychology at the University of Southern California. His research focuses primarily on understanding well-being in ecologically valid contexts. To examine within-person variations in well-being in daily life, he relies on daily diary and experience sampling techniques. The current paper concerns the relationship between nostalgia and well-being in daily life.

2016

Courtney Walsh is a third year doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin in the Human Development and Family Sciences department. Her research interests revolve around the daily experiences of romantic couples and the benefits of shared positivity. Other research interests include the bidirectional processes of romantic relationships and the self-concept, with a specific focus on self-expansion and self-concept clarity.

regg Sparkman is a PhD student at Stanford University studying dynamic norms: how information that others are changing can motivate personal change. He is interested in the intersections of motivation, social norms, identity and morality in domains related to sustainable behavior, collective action and social change.

Jennifer Dannals is a PhD candidate at Stanford Graduate School of Business studying Organizational Behavior. In addition to her research on social norms, Jennifer also researches other aspects of team dynamics, such as hierarchy, diversity and coordination.

Zoë Francis is currently completing her PhD at the University of Toronto. She has studied potential new ego depletion methodologies, and has investigated the interplay between individual differences and mental fatigue from behavioural, neuroscience, and theoretical perspectives.

Kassandra Cortes is a PhD student at the University of Waterloo. She examines the dynamics of interpersonal relationships using motivational and social cognitive frameworks.

Contact

For questions regarding this award, contact the Student Committee at spsp_gsc@spsp.org.

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