Susan T. Fiske is Emerita Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Professor of Public Affairs, Princeton University (Ph.D., Harvard University; honorary doctorates: Université catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands; Universitat Basel, Switzerland; Universidad de Granada, Spain).

Fiske publishes widely in social cognition. She has just finished another edition of Social Cognition (1984, 1991, 2008, 2013, 2017, 2025) on how people make sense of each other, along with the Sage Handbook of Social Cognition (2012, with Macrae) and the Sage Major Works in Social Cognition (2013). She published Social Cognition: Selected Work of Susan T. Fiske (2018).

With marketing consultant Chris Malone, she wrote The Human Brand: How We Relate to People, Products, and Companies (2013), which shows that our over-active intent-detectors make us assess corporations as if they are indeed people.

In the academic trade market, her book, Envy Up, Scorn Down: How Status Divides Us (2011, paperback 2012), sponsored by the Guggenheim and Russell Sage Foundations, is about how we compare ourselves all the time, and the problems this makes for us as individuals, partners, students, employees, and citizens.

As a social psychologist, she investigates emotional prejudices (pity, contempt, envy, and pride) at cultural, interpersonal, and neural levels, research previously funded by the Russell Sage Foundation (2008-2010), the National Science Foundation (1984-1986, 1995-1997), the National Institutes of Health (1986-1995), the Department of Justice (2013-2014) and the Templeton World Charities Foundation (2020-2024).

She has written more than 500 articles and chapters, as well as editing many books and journal special issues. Notably, she edits the Annual Review of Psychology (with Schacter) and the Handbook of Social Psychology (with Gilbert, Finkel, and Mendes, 6th ed.); both are expected to be Open Access in their respective upcoming editions. She also wrote an upper-level integrative text, Social Beings: A Core Motives Approach to Social Psychology (2004, 2010, 2014) and edited Beyond Common Sense: Psychological Science in the Courtroom (2008, with Borgida).

Besides editing the Annual Review of Psychology, she is on the Editorial Board of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of America). In 2014, as founding Editor, she launched Policy Insights from Behavioral and Brain Sciences, a new annual from FABBS (Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences).

Fiske’s work has had real-world impact. The U.S. Supreme Court in a 1989 landmark decision on gender bias cited her expert testimony in discrimination cases. In 1998, she also testified before President Clinton’s Race Initiative Advisory Board, and in 2001-03, she co-authored a National Academy of Science, National Research Council report on Methods for Measuring Discrimination. She chaired a 2014 NAS NRC report on IRBs in the social and behavioral sciences. In 2021, she chaired an NAS panel on the aging workforce and served on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Summit planning committee. In 2023 she co-chaired a report on advancing anti-racism in STEMM. In 2004, she published a Science article explaining how ordinary people can torture enemy prisoners, through processes of prejudice and social influence.

In 2013, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She has also won several scientific honors: the Guggenheim Fellowship, the APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, the APS William James Fellow Award, the European Federation's Wundt-James Award, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Kurt Lewin Award, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Donald T. Campbell Award. In 2021, the BBVA foundation awarded Fiske the Frontiers of Knowledge Award for Social Cognition (1984). Due to her contributions in the field, Fiske’s biography is being highlighted in the 40 Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine, Exhibit at National Academy of Sciences Building, she also has a dedicated women in science bench next to the Einstein statue outside the National Academy of Sciences Building. In 2019, Fiske became a finalist for the Association of American Publishers’ PROSE award for Best New Journal in the Social Sciences as the founding editor for Policy Insights from Behavior and Brain Science. In that same year, she was inducted into the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology’s Heritage Wall of Fame. Previously, she won the American Psychological Association’s Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest for anti-discrimination testimony and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues’ Allport Intergroup Relations Award for ambivalent sexism theory (with Glick), as well as Harvard’s Graduate Centennial Medal. She has been elected to several Presidencies: Association for Psychological Science, Federation of Associations in Brain and Behavioral Sciences, Foundation for the Advancement of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and Society for Personality and Social Psychology. She has also been elected Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow of the American Philosophical Society, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Her graduate students conspired for her to win Princeton’s graduate mentoring award in 2009, and her international colleagues arranged for her to win the Mentoring Award from the Association for Psychological Science in 2016. In 2021, thanks to student and faculty nominators, she won the SPSP Nalini Ambady Mentoring Award. She is grateful to them and to all her generous colleagues for these recognitions that each in fact reflect collaborative work. 

Her expert witness work has familiarized her with workplace discrimination in settings from shipyards and assembly lines to international investment firms, and she has served on diversity committees in several nonprofit settings, including Princeton’s Carl A. Fields Center. She grew up in Chicago’s Hyde Park (Obama’s neighborhood!), a stable, racially integrated community, and she still wonders why the rest of the world does not work that way. She now lives in Vermont with her sociologist husband Doug Massey, with treasured visits by daughter, stepdaughter, stepson, and his family.  

Click to view Professor Fiske's Psychology Department page, Woodrow Wilson School page, and Amazon author page.

Curriculum Vitae

Introduction Video