The International Social Cognition Network (ISCON) is seeking nominations for the 2024 Best Social Cognition Paper Award.

 

Each year, this award recognizes an outstanding article in the field of social cognition. Theoretical as well as empirical articles are eligible. The most prominent criteria will be the importance of the contribution and the envisioned influence it will have in the years to come.

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ISCON wants to emphasize that it defines social cognition broadly. In addition, the ISCON Best Paper Award is not instituted with a certain age group in mind. Senior and junior faculty, as well as post docs and graduate students, are all encouraged to nominate their work.

 

Social cognition is not a content area, but an approach to understanding social psychological phenomena. It is a level of analysis that aims at understanding social phenomena by investigating the mental processes that underlie them. The major concerns of the approach are the processes involved in the perception, judgment, and memory of social stimuli; the effects of cognitive, affective, and motivational factors on social information processing; and the behavioral and interpersonal consequences of mental processes. This level of analysis may be applied to any content area within social psychology, including research on intrapersonal, interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup processes.

 

This year’s award covers papers published in the 2024 calendar year. Thus, all peer-reviewed journal articles published in the 2024 edition(s) of scientific journals are eligible. Only papers published in 2024 will be considered. No in press papers are eligible. Applicants are asked to nominate themselves and to submit an article on which they are (co)author. We also welcome nominations of other people’s articles; if you are an editor, please consider nominating the best articles you edited. Nominees should make sure that other authors of the nominated article do not object to the nomination. The deadline for nominations is November 1, 2025. Nominations arriving after the deadline cannot be considered.

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Articles should be sent electronically to Eric Hehman (eric.hehman@mcgill.ca) with “ISCON Best Paper Award” in the subject line. This year the Best Paper Award Committee consists of Eric Hehman (McGill) as chair, Lora Park (University at Buffalo), Sara Haga (Universidad de Lisboa), and Hans Alves (Ruhr Universitat Bochum).

The award will be presented at the Social Cognition Preconference before the 2026 SPSP Meeting.