Immunology

When you pass by a stranger in need of help, do you stop to lend a hand? Maybe not... A landmark 1973 study found that seminary students in a hurry were less likely to help someone in distress, even when they were on their way to deliver a talk on the Parable of the Good Samaritan. A co-author of that study and several other distinguished researchers are the recipients of the 2013 annual awards from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). The contributions of these scientists to personality and social psychology include furthering our understanding of how personality shapes health and well-being across adulthood, why it's so hard to evaluate ourselves, and the virtues that divide political ideologies.

The Society's highest awards - the Jack Block, Donald T. Campbell, and Distinguished Scholar awards - go to Robert R. ("Jeff") McCrae, retired from the National Institute of Aging, Timothy D. Wilson of the University of Virginia, and Carol S. Dweck of Stanford University, respectively. The Career Contribution awards, which honor scholars whose research has led the field in new directions, are C. Daniel Batson of the University of Kansas and James Sidanius of Harvard University.

Good Samaritan, Social Dominance

Batson co-authored with John Darley the 1973 study on the "bystander effect" - revealing processes that influence how and when we help people. His work looks at a variety of topics that bridge psychology and religion, including altruism, empathy, and compassion. Batson is leading proponent for the existence of pure or selfless altruism, in which people help out of a genuine concern for the welfare of others.

Sidanius' work explains the acceptance of group-based social hierarchy - such as believing that men are superior to women or that Whites are superior to people of color - by both the dominant and oppressed groups. Long before others were convinced, Sidanius analyzed the inevitability and the significance of hierarchy in structuring society, social relations, and psychological functioning - pioneering the study of the widely shared cultural ideologies that provide the justification for group-based hierarchies.

Personality, Self-Insight, and Mindset

McCrae's work on personality in aging adults led to a resurgence of personality psychology in the 1980s and the establishment of the Big Five model of personality traits that persists today. His work has shown how individual differences in personality traits effect everything from health to coping. McCrae has established new ways of measuring personality traits and has looked at the effects of personality cross-culturally. Recently, he has written provocative papers on the future of personality psychology for the 21st century, including exploring the molecular genetics of personality dispositions.

Wilson's research examines why it is so hard for people to accurately evaluate themselves. He has shed light into the ways in which people are mistaken about themselves, whether wrong about the causes of their past actions or about their present attitudes. His book Stranger to Ourselves explored the challenges of self-insight. An Elected Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an Elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Wilson works to ensure that public policy is informed by scientific fact.

Dweck's work has examined how people's mindsets shape their lives and determine their achievement. In a series of well-known studies, Dweck demonstrated how people with a "growth mindset," who believe that certain qualities, such as intelligence, can be developed make life choices that lead to greater success than those with a "fixed mindset," who believe that basic abilities are unchangeable. This distinction profoundly affects people's motivation, psychological well-being, and learning, and the ideas have been extended to apply to work in diverse areas, such as education and intergroup relations.

Math and Science Intervention, Political Ideologies, Hidden bias

An intervention aimed at parents can boost children's interest in math and science, according the study awarded this year's Robert B. Cialdini Award for excellence in a published field study. Judith Harackiewicz of the University of Wisconsin, with colleagues Christopher Rozek, Chris Hulleman, and Janet Hyde, sent to parents of high-school students information that emphasized the importance of mathematics and science to college, career, and everyday life, and that offered tips for parents to communicate this importance to their children. Compared to a control group, children whose parents received the information took nearly a full extra semester of math and science. The paper, "Helping parents to motivate adolescents in mathematics and science: An experimental test of a utility-value intervention," was published in Psychological Science. Honorable Mention for the Cialdini Award goes to "Signing at the beginning makes ethics salient and decreases dishonest self-reports in comparison to signing at the end," by Lisa L. Shu and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.