Dorsa Amir Receives 2026 Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions

Dorsa Amir, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, was recently announced as a recipient of the 2026 APS Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions by the Association for Psychological Scientists (APS). 

First awarded in 2010 and named after APS’s first president, the Spence Award honors particularly creative and promising APS members who embody the future of the field. This year, it recognizes six psychological scientists conducting cutting-edge research on topics ranging from self-regulation to collective emotions to multicultural experiences. The recipients will be honored in May at the 2026 APS Annual Convention in Barcelona, Spain. Spence Awardees are also automatically granted status as APS Fellows in the review cycle following their award. 

Amir’s research examines the relationship between culture and cognition, exploring how cultural environments shape cognitive development and how cognitive processes, in turn, contribute to cultural patterns. Her work features collaborations with families and researchers all around the world, with a focus on small-scale societies. Through this approach, Amir’s research maps if, when, and how culture penetrates cognition, from low-level perceptual processes to higher-level decision making, with the aim of reintegrating the study of culture into core questions in cognitive science.