Harold Lasswell Award for Outstanding Scientific Accomplishment in Political Psychology
Gian Vittorio Caprara, Sapienza University of Rome

Gian Vittorio Caprara is Emeritus Professor at Sapienza University of Rome where he served as Director of Institute, Chair of Department, Coordinator of Graduate programs and Dean of Psychology Faculty.

He had temporary teaching appointments at the University of Milano Bicocca and at the Universities of Michigan, UCLA, UCI and Stanford. He has been a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study and at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study.

Among the offices held in Scientific Societies he served as President of the European Association of Personality, member of the Council of the International Society of Research on Aggression, member of the Executive committee of the European Association of Psychological Assessment, member of the Governing Council of the International Society of Political Psychology, Honorary President and Chair of Scientific Committee of the 14th Congress of Psychology held in Milan in July 2015.

Since 2000 he is a member of the Academia Europaea.

Caprara's contributions to the advancement of Psychological Science is attested by over 500 scientific publications including several volumes spanning across four major topics : personality, aggression , prosocial behavior and political preferences and participation.

In his major contributions to political psychology he asserts the need to posit the Person at the center of the political inquiry pointing to political preferences and participation as expressions of individuals' personality, and in particular to how self-beliefs, traits and values operate in concert. In his reasoning Democracy is viewed as the form of government most congenial to human development whose realization, however, largely depends upon citizens' moral growth.

Nevitt Sanford Award for Outstanding Professional Contributions to Political Psychology
Andreas Zick, Bielefeld University

Prof. Dr. Andreas Zick received in 1996 a PhD of the Faculty for Psychology of Marburg University, and in 2009 he received the Venia Legendi for Psychology by his habilitation on the Psychology of Acculturation at the Martin-Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg. Since 2008 he is Professor for Socialization and Conflict Research at the Faculty for Education Science at Bielefeld University. In 2013 he became director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence (IKG) at Bielefeld University and since 2019 speaker for Bielefeld University at the Research Institute Societal Cohesion. In 2016 he received the Communicator Prize of the German Science Foundation and the Founders Consortium for German Science.

David O. Sears Best Book on Mass Politics Award
Cigdem V. Sirin, University of Texas at El Paso
Nicholas A. Valentino, University of Michigan
José D. Villalobos, University of Texas at El Paso
For Seeing Us in Them: Social Divisions and the Politics of Group Empathy

What causes some people to stand in solidarity with those from other races, religions, or nationalities, even when that solidarity does not seem to benefit the individual or their group? Seeing Us in Them examines outgroup empathy as a powerful predisposition in politics that pushes individuals to see past social divisions and work together in complex, multicultural societies. It also reveals racial/ethnic intergroup differences in this predisposition, rooted in early patterns of socialization and collective memory. Outgroup empathy explains why African Americans vehemently oppose the border wall and profiling of Arabs, why Latinos are welcoming of Syrian refugees and support humanitarian assistance, why some white Americans march in support of Black Lives Matter through a pandemic, and even why many British citizens oppose Brexit. Outgroup empathy is not naïve; rather it is a rational and necessary force that helps build trust and maintain stable democratic norms of compromise and reciprocity.

Juliette and Alexander L. George Outstanding Political Psychology Book Award
John T. Jost, New York University
For Left and Right: The Psychological Significance of a Political Distinction

In this book, John Jost tackles fundamental questions about how psychology, neuroscience, and societal factors impact political attitudes and group divisions. In what sense, if any, are ordinary citizens "ideological"? Is it useful to locate political attitudes on a single dimension of representation? Are there meaningful differences in the beliefs, opinions, and values of leftists and rights-or liberals and conservatives? How are personality traits related to ideological preferences? What situational or contextual factors contribute to liberal and conservative shifts in the general population? What are the implications of ideological polarization for the future of democracy? Drawing on Max Weber's concept of elective affinities, one of the world's leading political psychologists discusses the myriad ways in which people choose ideas and ideas choose people. The book offers one of the most comprehensive syntheses of psychological research on left-right political orientation in decades; lays out the major assumptions of the leading theory of ideology in political psychology; and summarizes very recent research as well as historical contributions in social science.

Jim Sidanius Early Career Award
Laura K. Taylor, University College Dublin, Ireland

Dr. Laura K. Taylor promotes science with a clear social purpose and embodies the interdisciplinary nature of ISPP. Particular for the Sidanius Award, Dr. Taylor researches peacebuilding in children and young people, trying to counteract the origins and persistence of ethnic conflict around the world and over time. Her research innovatively investigates the impact of political violence on young people and their communities. Challenging the narrative that youth are either victims or perpetrators of political violence, she studies how conflict-affected young people may make positive contributions to society. This creative approach integrating developmental psychology and peace studies, summarized by the Developmental Peacebuilding Model (Taylor, 2020), has the potential to make a significant impact not only to this area of research, but also to program interventions and public policy globally. For example, Dr. Taylor has published with collaborators in Colombia, Croatia, Israel, Ireland, Kosovo, Republic of North Macedonia, Northern Ireland, Pakistan, and South Korea. As a rising leader in the field of political psychology, with a focus on promoting positive intergroup relations in childhood, Dr Taylor's research, teaching and mentoring, and global service exemplify the international, diversity and excellence priorities of ISPP.

John L. Sullivan Mentorship Award
Stanley Feldman, Stony Brook University

Stanley Feldman has had an impactful career. He has taught Political Science at Stony Brook University for 30 years, helping to guide the academic and professional lives of many students and former students over that time. He served as the Associate Director for the Stony Brook University Center for Survey Research from 2000-2015; a co-editor for ISPP’s journal, Political Psychology, 2005-2010, and ISPP President from 2013-2014. His research has focused on political ideology and values, and psychological bases of attitudes and opinions. His work has also explored the impact of personality characteristics on political attitudes, particularly authoritarianism, and also the role emotions play in politics and public responses to terrorism and threat. He has been, and continues to be, an author on articles and texts related to political psychology, extending his sharing of knowledge to a larger, global audience.

Best Dissertation Award
Anna Potoczek, Jagiellonian University
The Impact of Lack of Control on Norm Perception and Conformity

Dr. Anna Potoczek is a social and political psychologist interested in collective action intentions, intergroup relations, and coping with threats. Her PhD thesis concerned norm conformity among control-deprived individuals. Because lack of control is associated with increased withdrawal, avoidance motivation, and uncertainty, one could assume that it should push people to blindly conform to ingroup norms. In a set of 12 studies conducted in five countries in the context of political engagement, ecological and local activism, as well as racial prejudice, she showed that norm conformity among control-deprived individuals can actually be strategic and goal-driven. These results were published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Roberta Sigel Best Conference Paper by Early Career Member Award 1
Allison Anoll, Vanderbilt University
Andrew Engelhardt, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
A Drop in the Ocean: How Priors Anchor Attitudes Toward the American Carceral State

Allison Anoll is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. She received her PhD from Stanford University in 2016. Andrew Engelhardt is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He received his PhD from Vanderbilt University in 2019. Their award-winning 2021 ISPP conference paper, currently under review for publication, explores how differences in race socialization and experiences during emergent adulthood shape attitudes about reform of the American Carceral State. Adopting a Bayesian learning model and using survey data from over 15,000 Black and White respondents, their results help to explain both race and gender gaps in evaluations of the police, prisons, and American court system.

Roberta Sigel Best Conference Paper by Early Career Member Award 2 (for best paper with an Early Career Scholar as lead author)
Bjarki Gronfeldt, University of Kent
A small price to pay: National narcissism predicts readiness to sacrifice in-group members to defend the in-group’s image

Bjarki Gronfeldt is a PhD researcher in political psychology at the University of Kent. His research focuses on how collective narcissism influences attitudes about one's in-group members. In the award winning paper, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, collective narcissism in the national context was found to predict sacrificial attitudes about in-group members in order to improve comparisons with other countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The paper is available here in open access format: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01461672221074790

Noel Markwell Media Award
Ezra Klein, New York Times

Ezra Klein is a columnist for the New York Times and former founder and Editor-in-Chief of Vox. His analysis of politics, current events, and social issues are regularly informed and incorporate insights from social and political psychology. He is the author of Why We're Polarized.