Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology: Ben Dantzer

The Early Career Awards, given for the first time in 1974, recognize the large number of excellent early career psychologists. Recipients of this award may not have held a doctoral degree for more than nine years. For purposes of this award, psychology has been divided into 10 areas: animal learning and behavior, comparative; developmental; health; cognition/human learning; psychopathology; behavioral and cognitive neuroscience; perception/motor performance; social; applied research; and individual differences. Five areas are considered each year, with areas rotated in two-year cycles. The areas considered in 2020 were animal learning and behavior, comparative; developmental; health; cognition/ human learning; and psychopathology. Each year, panels are selected for the areas under consideration, and these panels recommend nominees to the Committee on Scientific Awards. The 2020 recipients of the APA Scientific Contribution Awards were recognized by the 2019 Board of Scientific Affairs and selected by the 2019 Committee on Scientific Awards. For seminal contributions to our understanding of both proximate and ultimate causes of animal behavior in natural environments, particularly the evolutionary and physiological mechanisms that enable wild animals to cope with environmental change. Ben Dantzer's research has led to important new insights into the consequences of physiological stress for pace of development, for maternal behavior, and for social/cooperative behavior. His work showed that, contrary to popular belief, organisms that experience stress in the wild typically experience increased, rather than decreased, fitness. His research is already having a profound impact and has helped to establish the relatively new field of evolutionary endocrinology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).