Richeson Receives SAGE-CASBS Award for Research on Discrimination and Diversity

APS Fellow Jennifer Richeson has received the 2020 SAGE-CASBS Award for her broad-ranging and influential explorations of psychological phenomena related to cultural diversity, including original insights into the cognitive, affective, and behavioral elements of intergroup dynamics. A social psychologist at Yale University, Richeson uses a broad range of empirical methods to examine the potential cognitive “costs” and mutual misperceptions associated with intergroup interactions. She served on the APS Board of Directors from 2009 to 2012.

Launched in 2013 by SAGE Publishing (publisher of APS journals) and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, the SAGE-CASBS Award recognizes outstanding achievement in the behavioral and social sciences that advance understanding of pressing social issues. In 2018, the award went to APS Fellow Carol Dweck, a recipient of the APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award, the William James Fellow Award, and the APS Mentor Award.

In her 2016 conversation on Inside the Psychologist’s Studio, Richeson spoke with APS Past Board Member Wendy Berry Mendes about her mentors and early influences, her research over the years, her thoughts about the state of race relations, and more. “I was kind of the Kramer of academics,” she joked, “I just kind of fell into things.” This tendency took Richeson from her middle-school observations of students being “tracked” along largely racial lines, to a pivotal class on race, class, and gender as an undergraduate at Brown. Richeson also spoke about the supportive influence of psychologist Nalini Ambady during her time in graduate school at Harvard, who helped Richeson overcome self-doubt and prepare to meet the challenges of being a woman scientist.

Richeson has authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and received numerous awards and honors, including a John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2007), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2015), the Mamie Phipps Clark and Kenneth B. Clark Distinguished Lecture Award from Columbia University (2019), the Career Trajectory Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (2019), and a Carnegie Foundation Senior Fellowship (2020). 

In addition to a cash prize for the SAGE-CASBS Award, Richeson will deliver a public lecture at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences on a date to be announced.