What is the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology?

"May you live in interesting times" is an admonition of unclear origin but obvious meaning. Clearly, for personality and social psychology, these are interesting times. The discipline faces many challenges, but also lives in an era of unprecedented opportunity. Recently, the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology (FPSP) was established to rise to the challenge of these interesting times—aiming to raise philanthropic funds and sponsor activities to advance personality and social psychology, ones that will explicitly address the challenges the discipline faces as well as to identify and take advantage of clear opportunities.

The Foundation is designed to provide crucial support for wide-ranging, forward-looking, long-term activities that could enhance the discipline. It focuses on development and fundraising, seeking gifts and donations to fund activities that have the potential to augment and broaden the vigor of personality and social psychology. As such, as a non-profit charitable organization incorporated in the state of New York in 2006, the Foundation is its own entity, legally separate from related organizations, but it shares the commitment of those organizations to personality and social psychology.

Already, the Foundation has been quite active—as can be seen by clicking on the menu of buttons to the left. Beyond these initial activities, the Foundation aims to establish additional awards to honor those who have made significant contributions to our field. It will also seek to fund an array of fellowships, travel grants, research projects, conferences, and innovative educational programs.