The International Society for Political Psychology has just announced that Professor James L. Gibson, Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government at Washington University in St. Louis, has been awarded the highly prestigious Harold Lasswell Award for Outstanding Scientific Accomplishment in Political Psychology, bestowed on an individual deemed to have made a distinguished scientific contribution in the field of political psychology. Gibson’s contributions to political psychology are many, ranging from research on the psychology of institutional legitimacy to the psychology of truth and reconciliation and political tolerance, worldwide. In receiving this award, Gibson joins such prestigious scholars as Jim Sidanius (Harvard), Milton Lodge (Stony Brook), Paul Sniderman (Stanford), and John Sullivan (Minnesota).
It is noteworthy that political psychology is not the only political science subfield in which Gibson scholarship has been recognized. In 2011, Gibson received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association, honoring “a distinguished career of scholarly achievement.” Over the course of his career, Gibson’s scholarly work has been recognized by four different political science subfields: 1) Comparative Politics, 2) Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, 3) Political Organizations and Parties, and 4) Law and Courts. For a scholar’s work to be judged to be outstanding in so many distinct subfields in political science is unusual if not unprecedented.