Susan Tufts Fiske, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and professor of psychology and public affairs, transferred to emeritus status on July 1, 2023. When asked to reflect on her most important discovery for a 2016 book, Susan recounted her research showing that warmth and competence are fundamental dimensions of social perception. Ironically, she is a prominent exception to a key finding from this work, that it is difficult for people to be seen as simultaneously high in competence and warmth. Susan is exceptionally competent — a pioneer in the study of social cognition, transformative scholar of intergroup relations, and indefatigable advocate for psychological science. She is also exceptionally warm — an inclusive, dedicated mentor with a lifelong passion for using social science to understand and reduce inequality.

Susan was raised in Chicago’s Hyde Park by her father, Donald Fiske, who was an esteemed psychology professor, and her mother, Barbara Fiske, who was a civic volunteer and editor. She credits the racial integration of her community, early exposure to social activism, and dinnertime conversations about scientific rigor as the basis of her enduring drive to do sophisticated science that accomplished social good. Susan earned her B.A. from Radcliffe College and her Ph.D. from Harvard University before taking her first faculty position at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1978. In 1986, she moved to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she became a Distinguished University Professor before joining the Princeton faculty in 2000.

Susan has made many enduring contributions to psychology, with the first dating back to her days as an assistant professor. In 1984, she and Shelley Taylor wrote Social Cognition (Random House), a thorough but accessible distillation of burgeoning efforts to use insights and techniques from cognitive psychology to illuminate social and interpersonal processes. The book galvanized the cognitive approach to social psychology into one that now underpins the vast majority of social psychological research. Moreover, guided by her Hyde Park values, Susan used the innovative tools afforded by the cognitive revolution she was leading to understand when and why individuals stereotyped members of social outgroups. The combination of intellectual breadth, creativity, and a willingness to embrace methodological innovation in the service of understanding inequality continues to be the hallmark of Susan’s numerous other discoveries and contributions to psychology.

Susan has been widely recognized for her scholarly work. She is an elected member of several national academic societies, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and she received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in 2019. Within the field of psychology, she has received the most prestigious awards, including the Association for Psychological Science James McKeen Cattell Award, the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, and the Donald T. Campbell Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. In addition, Susan is the recipient of four honorary degrees from international universities.

Susan has also used her expertise to inspire more equitable social policy and legal decisions. She has served as an expert on numerous court cases, including the Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins case on gender discrimination, in which Susan assisted the attorneys with the amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court; her testimony was cited in the Supreme Court decision. In addition, she discussed her research on the social determinants of prejudice at a meeting of President Clinton’s Initiative on Race. She also recently co-chaired the Advancing Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in STEM Organizations: A Consensus Study committee for the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. The resultant 2023 report provides actionable, research-based guidance for STEM institutions and organizations to advance recruitment and retention of members of minoritized groups.

As influential as her scholarship has been, Susan’s service to the field and impact as a mentor have been unparalleled. Highlights of her service include the presidencies of multiple national organizations dedicated to behavioral science, over twenty years as editor of the Annual Review of Psychology, the preeminent review journal in psychology, twenty-five years as co-editor of the Handbook of Social Psychology, the preeminent handbook of social psychology, and founder of the journal Policy Insights from Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Additionally, she showers attention and guidance on her graduate and undergraduate students that last long after they have left her lab. Her students have recognized her generous mentoring by honoring her with the Association for Psychological Science Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Ambady Award for Mentoring Excellence from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and Princeton University’s Graduate School Mentoring Award.

In sum, Susan has grown her family dinnertime discussions about science and society into a rich, ongoing intellectual conversation with scientists, policymakers, and students from around the world. We, the faculty of the Department of Psychology and the School of Public and International Affairs, are grateful to be among her interlocutors and friends.

Written by members of the Department of Psychology and the School of Public and International Affairs faculty.