Linda Tropp, professor of social psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has been selected to receive the 2018 Scientific Impact Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. The award “honors the author of a specific article offering a theoretical, empirical, and/or methodological contribution that has proven highly influential over the last 25 years.”
Professor Tropp is being honored for her 2006 article “A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory.” This theory maintains that contact, under certain conditions, between two or more social groups can promote tolerance. If groups are allowed to communicate with one another, they may start to appreciate each other’s viewpoints. Professor Tropp believes that contact theory, devised originally for racial and ethnic encounters, can be extended to other groups.
Dr. Tropp is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. She is the co-author of When Groups Meet: The Dynamics of Intergroup Contact (Psychology Press, 2011).
Professor Tropp, joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts in 2006 after teaching at Boston College. She was promoted to full professor in 2012. Dr. Tropp is magna cum laude graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she majored in psychology and Spanish. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Professor Tropp will be honored at the 2018 Society of Experimental Social Psychology conference in Seattle this fall.