SPSSI affords social and behavioral scientists opportunities to apply their knowledge and insights to the critical problems of today's world.
The Society's mission is extended to the global arena by a team of representatives who cover developments at UN headquarters in New York and Geneva.
The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) was formally established during the height of the Great Depression, on September 1, 1936, at the annual APA convention at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Over 100 psychologists attended the meeting where the decision to institute SPSSI was made, in response to a widely felt need to bring the insights of psychological science to bear on contemporary social problems.
SPSSI members have also faced episodic attacks on their academic freedom both for their political views and for opposing the imposition of loyalty oaths on university professors.
In 1937, SPSSI inaugurated a tradition of speaking publicly on matters of contemporary politics, when it issued an Armistice Day statement decrying what it saw as a dangerous push toward war.
Between November 1939 and March 1940, SPSSI issued a total of nine press releases refuting the inevitability of war and highlighting the social psychological processes producing warlike attitudes and the success of propaganda.
In 1944, SPSSI issued a statement in support of the work of Ruth Benedict and Gene Weltfish, anthropologists at Columbia University, who wrote a booklet refuting the then-common idea that there are innate racial differences in intelligence.
Later that year, SPSSI issued a report that called for a radical restructuring of conventional gender roles in the postwar reconstruction, so that men and women could participate equally in the world of work.
In 1954, in Brown v Board of Education, the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregation by race was no longer permissible in US schools.
It continued episodically through the years to insist that race is a socially constructed category with no significant biological basis, least of all in intelligence.
In 1966, under the presidency of Jerome Frank (who would become a founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility), SPSSI issued a statement condemning the use of torture by US ally South Vietnam.
The Society continued its work supporting the rights of various groups of minorities with its publication of a special volume of the Journal of Social Issues devoted to women's perspectives in 1972.
The volume focused not only on questioning female stereotypes and traditional roles, but also on developing feminist principles which it said “raised fundamental questions regarding present institutions like the family... peace, racism, population, and the environment.” In 1977 it established a Task Force on Sexual Orientation to review the latest social scientific research on homosexuality.
The Society became a UN-NGO with observer status in 1987, appointing a representative to the UN whose responsibilities were to report on major international issues to SPSSI and expose UN staff to relevant social science, a mandate that continues to this day.
The tradition of presenting expert evidence on psychological research regarding stereotyping continued in 1989, when Susan Fiske and other SPSSI members testified in a gender discrimination case.
Recent statements have addressed such issues as the death penalty; global climate change; the psychological effects of unemployment; immigration reform; gay, lesbian bisexual and transgender issues; interpersonal violence; same sex adoption; marriage equality; psychological outcomes of children of same-sex parents; and racial profiling.
The meetings equip staffers and lawmakers with the necessary psychological knowledge to provide scientific, empirically supported arguments on social issues.
Other congressional briefings, produced by SPSSI's Policy Committee in conjunction with leading researchers, have focused on same-sex marriage, the psychological effects of unemployment, and media violence.
It shared scientific findings on the psychological antecedents and consequences of hate crime with lawmakers and civil rights groups.
Its members’ research has also been central to a number of amici curiae filed—and evidence submitted—on major Supreme Court cases, including cases pertaining to the integration of public schools (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka), gender-based stereotyping (Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins) the use of affirmative action in higher education (Grutter v. Bollinger) and the use of the Washington football team's logo (Susan S. Harjo, et al. v. Pro-Football, Inc.).
His pioneering work in the 1930s on the intelligence of white and black students in the United States and his evidence as an expert witness in Delaware were instrumental in winning the Supreme Court school segregation case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
Smith testified against segregation in schools as an expert witness in the Brown v. Board of Education case and in 1986 won the Society's Kurt Lewin Award.
In pursuit of that goal, Watson helped found the SPSSI in 1936, served as its first president and remained a contributing member for the remainder of his career.
[1] The Clara Mayo Grant awards SPSSI members who are enrolled in graduate programs in psychology, applied social sciences, other similar fields, and who are researching the realm of sexism, racism, or prejudice.
[2] The Crosby Spendlove Award is given to a graduate student enrolled in either a Master's or PhD program that is the first or sole author on a presentation for the SPSSI Biennial Conference.
[3] The Grants-in-Aid award is given to a graduate student who is proposing to research social problem areas that are not likely to receive support from other traditional sources.