Looking for a new way to connect with other SPSP members? Join a Free-Form Friday session. These small, virtual meeting rooms (generally maximum 15 attendees) are hosted by members for a variety of activities, including: Sharing career advice, pondering big picture questions together, meeting members with a similar background, brainstorming sessions, and more. Take advantage of this unique opportunity!
Have an idea to host a Free-Form Friday session? Apply to host a future session (submit a meeting name, host, description, and preferred dates/times).
Sign-ups
Sign-ups for January open December 20.
January Free-Form Schedule
All Times U.S. Eastern Time Zone
This session provides an opportunity for faculty to learn about submitting a proposal to the Social Psychology Program at the National Science Foundation. The session covers information and tips and allows time to ask and answer questions. The session is intended for current faculty and post-docs who are preparing proposals that advance Social Psychology; we will not cover funding mechanisms in other NSF programs (e.g., no coverage of the Graduate Research Fellowship Program).
Hosts: Ximena Arriaga (NSF) & Steve Breckler (NSF)
This session is for graduate, post-bac, and post-doc members who identify as part of the LGBTQA+ community. Navigating grad school is hard. The goal is this session is to have an open conversation about what being queer in grad school means to us. We want to share experiences and resources that can help make the grad school experience better.
Host: Danica Kulibert (Tulane University)
In this session, I will discuss tips and tricks for writing for general audiences. We will touch on issues such as why you might want to reach broader audiences and what the pros and cons are. How you get started, how to structure your piece, what are some good news hooks, and how and where do you pitch it. What is the editing process like and what happens after it is published? I will draw from my own experiences of writing for the Conversation and what I learned when I attended an Op-Ed writing workshop. This free-form Friday session is geared toward anyone who would like to learn about how to write for general audiences.
Host: Marie Helweg-Larsen (Dickinson College)
When, why, and how should social and personality psychologists talk to the media about their research? What should you do if you've been asked to speak on a podcast or radio show or be interviewed by a reporter? What considerations should you weigh when talking about your research for the public, and what are some best practices for talking about your work in a way that is both engaging and of interest to a broad audience, and also nuanced and scientifically rigorous? This session will share some best practices for engaging with the media about your research and answer questions about how to present your work to non-academic audiences.
Host: Kari Leibowitz (Health psychologist, speaker, and writer)
We are seeing an increase in more diverse scholars from different cultural/ethnic backgrounds obtain training and seeking jobs in the field of social/personality psychology. One potential challenge that many of these scholars face may be how they are perceived by others due to the nature of their names. That is, many scholars have non-Anglicized names (e.g., Chinese first and last names). Would admission or hiring committees have conscious or unconscious biases about these applicants/scholars on the basis of their name? For instance, would a scholar with a Chinese first and last name be judged as someone who may be less fitting with North American culture, or have their English language proficiency called into question? The purpose of this session is to explore some of these questions, to see what challenges other scholars with non-Anglicized names may face, and potentially figure out how as a field, we can be more welcoming to scholars of all backgrounds.
Host: Xiaowen Xu (College of William & Mary)
Are you considering a career outside academia? Or curious about industry research? In this session we will chat about the benefits and downsides of the different careers, including how they relate to data access, scientific rigor, ethics, and any other topics you'd like to discuss.
This session is primarily for early career researchers who are considering a switch, as well as any career stage researchers who may want to collaborate with industry researchers.
Host: Maarten Bos (Snap Inc.)
