Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology: Molly J. Crockett.

Abstract

The Early Career Awards, given for the first time in 1974, recognize the large number of excellent early career psychologists. Recipients of this award may not have held a doctoral degree for more than nine years. For purposes of this award, psychology has been divided into 10 areas: animal learning and behavior, comparative; developmental; health; cognition/human learning; psychopathology; behavioral and cognitive neuroscience; perception/motor performance; social; applied research; and individual differences. Five areas are considered each year, with areas rotated in two-year cycles. The areas considered in 2021 were animal learning and behavior, comparative; developmental; health; cognition/human learning; and psychopathology. Each year, panels are selected for the areas under consideration, and these panels recommend nominees to the Committee on Scientific Awards. The 2021 recipients of the APA Scientific Contribution Awards were recognized by the 2020 Board of Scientific Affairs and selected by the 2020 Committee on Scientific Awards. For distinguished contributions to the psychology of human morality; for exquisite experiments that shed light on the social, cognitive, and neuroscientific processes leading people to decide whether to help or harm, to punish or extend grace, to trust or to condemn. Through the deployment of a vast and impressive methodological toolkit, Molly J. Crockett's work has unearthed basic principles of both moral cognition and behavior, in the lab and the world, that ultimately will inform interventions to increase our prosocial tendencies and reduce our more damning ones. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).